"Descending Angels"

The Smiling Angel on the Shelf

I love to tell the story of the smiling angel on the shelf. It comes from my experiences as a hospice chaplain. I was called to the hospital to visit a dying woman. I had visited with her a few times in her home before she was admitted to the hospital.

The hospital had a respite room in which the families of hospice patients could wait for the deaths of their loved ones. It contained a large couch, a chair that folded out into a bed, a coffee table, a refrigerator, games, books, and newspapers. The hospital often provided snacks for the families. The hospital staff and personnel were a blessing to the families as they waited in this room for their loved ones to die.

As I entered Mary’s room, she greeted me with a great big smile. She always had a smile for me regardless of the amount of pain she was in. I walked to the side of her bed and sat on a chair the family always had there for me.

The hospice nurse had told me Mary didn’t have much time left. Her organs had been shutting down over the last few days. I could see purple around her mouth, and her fingertips were blue. Her skin was an off-yellow, another indication it would not be long before she drew her last breath.

Soon, Mary would be escorted into the presence of Jesus by the angels sent to her by God in this moment of glory. One of His loved ones was coming home to be with Him and her loved ones who had gone home before her.

The look on Mary’s face let me know she was relaxed at the thought of her impending death. She spoke to me and pointed at something on a shelf near the TV. I bent in to hear what she was saying.

“Pastor, do you see what I see?”

What was she looking at in her final moments of life on earth? What had made her so relaxed?

“Pastor, there’s an angel on the TV shelf, and it’s smiling at me.”

Oh what a blessing and glory to God for His angels who embrace those dying and escort them into the presence of Jesus.

But that raises questions. Who are these angels? Where are they from? What’s their origin? Are there any resources we can look at that will tell us about these angels? Simply put, angels are a gift from God to minister to His children who are dying so they will know they won’t face death alone or walk through the valley of death by themselves.

Look at what God’s Word tells us: “Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?” (Hebrews 1:14).

Death is the transition from the physical world to a spiritual, supernatural world. I like to explain it to the family and to the dying this way. When a baby is created in the womb of a woman, as it grows and develops, the baby finds it has a very comfortable, safe place there. It hears its mother’s heartbeat and breathing and feels her warmth. It’s a very peaceful, comfortable world for the baby.

Then something begins to happen to the mother’s body. It tells her it’s time for the baby to be born. The mother’s body creates certain enzymes, and the womb begins to contract. The baby starts wondering what’s happening to its world, and it fights to stay in its safe, secure world. But no matter how much it fights the contractions, the baby loses the battle. The birthing process begins. The baby is pushed out of the womb down a dark tube and is born into this great, big world.

This world is stained with sin and is not without its problems, but compared to being in the womb, it’s a world beyond the baby’s wildest imagination. Even as the umbilical cord is cut, the baby is amazed and would not return to its other world even if it could. For us, death is what cuts the umbilical cord that holds us to the things of this world. We were designed by God to love life and seek to stay alive as long as possible; that’s why we fight so hard to stay alive. No matter our circumstances or state of health, we fight death. We don’t want to die. We don’t want to face death. Death is our enemy, and we want to live. Yet beyond the door of death is a world that God’s Word describes this way: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived the things God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). One of my spiritual heroes is the evangelist D. L. Moody. After having been given up for dead, Moody revived and said God had permitted him to see beyond the thin veil separating the seen from the unseen world. He said he had been “within the gates, and beyond the portals” and had caught a glimpse of familiar faces of those he had “loved long since and lost awhile.” He wrote,

Someday you will read in the paper that D. L. Moody of East Northfield is dead. Don’t believe a word of it. At that moment, I shall be more alive than I am now. I shall have gone up higher, that is all. Out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal, a body that death cannot touch, that sin cannot taint, and a body fashioned like unto his glorious body.1

Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher, spoke of the glory that attends the death of the children of God.

If I may die as I have seen some die, I court the grand occasion. I would not wish to escape death by some by-road if I may sing as they sang. If I may have such hosannas and alleluias beaming in my eyes as I have and seen and heard from them, it were a blessed thing to die.2

That is the world beyond death. Death is the enemy, but in Christ, there is eternal life.

In his book Angels, Billy Graham told the story of being in London and watching as Queen Elizabeth returned from a trip overseas. He said there were “great crowds, parades of dignitaries, crack troops, and marching bands.”3 He saw all the splendor for a queen returning from a trip. He said that was nothing compared to the homecoming of the believer who has said good-bye to all the suffering of this life and has been immediately surrounded by angels who carry him up to the glorious welcome awaiting them in heaven.

The Word of God tells us the angels rejoice when a soul is saved. Oh what will it be like when children of God come home to be with Him and the angels and their loved ones permanently? What a celebration that will be when we enter through the gates of glory into heaven.