Paul Baloche - For Unto Us - A Christmas DevotionalSample

"Angels from the realms of glory..."

Angels are not fairies with glittering trains made of moonbeams, nor are they re-created humans flying to and fro doing CPR on broken people. Nope.  Angels are simply messengers. In fact, the word "angel" actually means "messenger." So why is it that, in 2015, many people have chosen to worship angels while refusing to worship the God they serve? How strange is that? 

Human beings are ecstatic at the rumor of an angelic appearance, but are disinterested in the greater truth they represent. It's as if we swoon with joy when the mailman walks up to our front door, but are completely disinterested in the letter he is carrying. We ask the mailman for his autograph, but throw away the letter. 

Perhaps we've forgotten Paul's warning in Colossians 2:18-19... "Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in...the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God."

Such is not the order of things in the Heavenly realm. Angels are simply servants of the Most High God, and their radiance comes from having stood in His Presence. They are speakers of His Word, doers of His Will and singers of His Song. And unlike mankind, they do not have to choose daily whether or not to serve Him. The angels who long ago chose God are sealed in His service. 

But it is not so with us. The glorious freedom of the children of God includes a wonderful and terrible gift: free will. And free will rises in us every day, much like the sun rises in the sky. We daily choose to walk in His light, or to walk in darkness. We daily choose to obey His Word, or to obey the world. We daily choose to worship the Creator, or to worship His creation. 

Angels are just one small part of His glorious creation, and when they sang that night in the skies over Bethlehem, they had one message and one message only: "Come and worship." Were they saying, "Come and worship this supernatural happening?" No. They were saying, "Come and worship Jesus Christ." No matter how glorious the angelic harmonies on that holy night, these messengers were simply pointing to the Source and saying, "Don't look at us. Look at Him."