A CHRISTIAN'S TV GUIDE

With an apparent public appetite for so much inanity and even trash, such as the reality shows offer in the name of entertainment, it is a wonder that some programs such as Touched By An Angel have survived so long and continue in re-runs. Because they have, we can believe that somewhere in the human heart there still beats a desire to believe in the love and power of God and the possibility that his grace is available to us to intercede and change us for the better. It is my hope and belief that this is reality rather than the exception in people.

This hope was shared by Abraham Lincoln and expressed in one memorable sentence in his first inaugural address. Coming into the presidency well aware of the darkness slavery was casting over the nation threatening the dissolution of the union he expressed this hope:

The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the organ when touched again, as surely it will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Tess, Monica, Andrew and Gloria have brought into our homes the hope that God’s own angels can be reality in our lives and bring to fruition the promise of our text: “For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.”

It is instructive, I believe, that this scripture does not promise an angel but, rather, angels. Perhaps we can conclude that God’s angels are not general practitioners but specialists with thousands of year’s experience in their particular areas of expertise on call twenty-four-seven for our specific needs of the moment! Let’s consider that possibility.

I. Guardian Angels

For one, it seems evident that our Father has provided us with guardian angels. As children in Sunday School we learned the amazing story of “The Three Hebrew Children”, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego who were thrown into a fiery furnace because they would not bow down and worship the golden idol created by King Nebuchadnezzar. But when the king approached the furnace to view the remains of those who had defied him he was shocked by what he saw. Instead of three charred bodies there  were four men standing untouched by the flames. Being assured by the guards that three men had been bound and thrown into the fire the stunned ruler gasped, “But I see four men unbound, walking in the middle of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the fourth has the appearance of a god!”

Then there was Daniel, cast into a den of lions because he defied an edict of King Darius that anyone who prayed to anyone but him for thirty days would become dinner for the lions. Although Darius was fond of Daniel and found him to be an otherwise loyal subject, he had no choice but to administer the punishment. After a sleepless night, he returned to the den hoping against hope that the lions had not been hungry. Approaching it he cried out, “O Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God whom you faithfully serve been able to deliver you from the lions?” From deep in the den came Daniel’s response, “My God sent his angel and shut the lion’s mouths so that they would not hurt me, because I was found blameless before him.”

While it goes without saying that none of us here today has required a visit from a guardian angel under such dramatic circumstances, if you will think back across your life you will certainly recall times of immanent danger when something or someone interceded on your behalf. Often our foolish actions and disobedience has placed us in harms way and, looking back, we wonder what power beyond ourselves rescued us from danger. Too often, I’m afraid, we simply chalk it up to good luck and move on without ever thinking that perhaps a guardian angel was sent our way and we never knew it.

When I was an infant of only a month or two, my father drove his car  over the side of a mountain a few miles from our home in Tennessee. He and his drinking buddies were returning from another lost weekend in the hellholes of Chattanooga. The car rolled two hundred feet down the cliff and came to rest upright balanced tediously on a giant rock. They were pulled to the road without a scratch. My father had no thought of a guardian angel or any other kind at that point in his life. But his mother, my Nanny Starnes, knew about such things and probably never ceased praying for God to keep her prodigal son from danger until he could come to himself and return home to his waiting Father. By God’s grace he did just that, just a few months later. Had his guardian angel not been on the scene that night, God knows where I would be this morning.