Have Yourself an Enchanted Little Advent

Long ago, Jacob confessed, “The Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it” (Gen. 28:16). Declarations like this haunt me, in the best of ways. It makes me wonder if the world is charged with far more spiritual activity than we notice. Borrowing a word from the philosopher Charles Taylor, what if the earth is enchanted with heaven? Like Jacob, perhaps once we die we will discover that many things—visible and invisible—were ever-present and we were unaware.

The inclusion of angels throughout the biblical narrative is evidence of this, and the season of Advent can help us to reclaim the place these enchanted beings hold in our faith. Angels saturate the Christmas story and are seen as extensions of God’s indwelling presence. Angels, not humans, were first to announce the good news of Christ’s birth. And their proclamation was made to poor shepherds, not the wealthy and powerful elite. In the Bible, angels were seen as help from heaven (Psalm 91:11-12).

If you’ve ever received insight into a problem, felt oddly protected from harm, or sensed a vague spiritual nudge toward a specific direction, maybe the Lord’s angelic emissaries were at work and you were unaware.

In her book Walking on Water, the great writer Madeleine L’Engle observed, “We lose our ability to see angels as we grow up.” By this, she meant we live in a culture that encourages us to suppress our imaginations as we age. We do this in the name of cultural sophistication. We think it is charming to believe in (and claim to see) angels as little children. But as we grow, we are encouraged to put this enchanted nonsense behind us.

For all the gifts of the Enlightenment, its greatest liability was limiting any possibilities beyond what we can see through a microscope. Jesus once said that adults would do well to become like children if they are to enter the kingdom (Matt. 18:3). Maybe Jesus wasn’t talking about a future kingdom that will one day manifest but the kingdom that is now in our midst, which most adults no longer have eyes to see.

No wonder God sent Gabriel to a young girl (Luke 1:26–38)—a virgin would believe and receive the angel’s good news. Notice that when Gabriel visited the religious old man named Zechariah, he had a more difficult time believing and receiving the good news (vv. 11–20). As we age, we can lose our ability to spiritually see. We can close our souls to everything that cannot be scientifically explained. For instance, if an angel visited you today (in a dream or in a stranger or in a vision), would you be open to believing? Or would you explain it away?

From Genesis to Revelation, angels saturate the biblical narrative. Gabriel’s angelic presence on earth was not an outlier but perhaps the unseen norm made manifest. According to the Scriptures, angels could be anywhere. And in the Bible, we see them everywhere.

In the story of Abraham, angels became his guests (Gen. 18:2). Jacob wrestled with an angel all night (32:24). Through an angel, Daniel was given political wisdom (Dan. 10:10–14). John the Revelator fell prostrate after an angel visited him on the island of Patmos (Rev. 1:1). Angels gave directions to lowly shepherds under the evening sky (Luke 2:8–9). Angels ministered to Jesus in the desert after he vanquished Satan, an angel of darkness (Matt. 4:11).

Jesus said he could have called more than twelve legions of angels to his aid on the cross if he so desired (Matt. 26:53). And, of course, there is the mysterious line in the Book of Hebrews that encourages all of us to practice hospitality because those we serve may, in fact, be angels (Heb. 13:2).

In Matthew’s gospel alone, angels appear through dreams at least six times (1:20; 2:12, 13, 19, 22; 27:19). How profound that angels spoke not only to Jewish men such as Joseph but also, perhaps, to pagan women such as Pilate’s wife! God is everywhere (including in our sleep) and is desirous to speak with anyone open to listening, even those who are outside the faith.

A plain reading of Scripture reveals that angels fill the whole earth. As L’Engle reflects,

All the angelic host as they are described in Scripture, have a wild and radiant power that often takes us by surprise. They are not always gentle. They bar the entrance to Eden so that we may never return home. They send plagues upon the Egyptians. They are messengers of God. They are winds. They are flames of fire. They are young men dressed in white.

Perhaps it’s God’s provision that we are not yet fully aware of his omnipresence. Maybe, like with Wi-Fi, the overall input would crush us in our current physical state. When Gabriel appeared to the prophet Daniel while he was in a deep sleep, Daniel was terrified and afterward was “worn out [and] lay exhausted for several days” (8:27). It is no wonder that a glimpse of Gabriel sent shivers up Mary’s spine!

Not only do angels speak to humans, but also what their listeners choose to do with their instruction bears tremendous impact on our lives.

Consider the similarities and differences between Gabriel’s visits with Zechariah and his ones with Mary, for instance. After Gabriel spoke, both Zechariah and Mary asked follow-up questions. We should never interpret from Scripture that God is opposed to our questions. He knows we are finite beings. He is, however, opposed to a posture of narrow-mindedness. When we limit the possibilities of God’s revelation, our hearts close in.

Recall how Zechariah was silenced after he responded in unbelief to Gabriel’s prophesy about his aging wife Elizabeth’s pregnancy with John the Baptist. Yet we might not see this as a punishment so much as an invitation for him to be still and open to new possibilities—his nine-month silencing was meant to expand his capacity for spiritual imagination. Mary, in stark contrast, immediately replied to Gabriel in a posture of openness: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38, ESV).

In short, to believe the Bible is to believe in angels. Sorry, secular humanism, but the world is enchanted with divine presence, chock-full of God stuff. Just as Jacob’s ladder found angels ascending and descending (Gen. 28:12), the realms of the heavens and of earth intricately overlap.

Do we live as if this is true? I don’t. I could rightfully be accused of living as if the world were devoid of divine presence and angelic activity. We occasionally hear testimonies of spiritual visitations, God moments, or the Holy Spirit moving in a worship gathering. But experiencing God’s presence occasionally on earth is not the biblical worldview.

The writer of Hebrews means to encourage us with the fact that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (that is, dead saints; see 12:1). So why not angels too? Maybe angels surround us every second of the day but exist in other frequencies or hidden dimensions just beyond our noticing. Angels are like ladders from God, connecting heaven and earth, and we should always live with the possibility of their presence in mind.

The possibility of enchantment might explain why fantasy authors like J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and J. K. Rowling grip us with their stories. Even some of the staunchest of atheists long to believe that there is more to the world than meets the eye. I think most people would like to believe that earth’s atmosphere is permeated with a presence greater than us.

The truth is, we inhabit a God-saturated earth. One of the divine names is Immanuel, meaning that God is with us. Despite the way we may feel at times, we have never been alone, we never are, and we never will be. God’s presence saturates the entire cosmos. Yet what Jacob said is true for us: The Lord is here, and we are often unaware. How might an increase of spiritual awareness to the presence of God—through angels or otherwise—affect our daily lives? Perhaps we, too, (like Mary) might become full of God’s empowering grace if our posture became that of surrendered servants.

In this spirit, perhaps Christians might add one additional verse to the iconic song of the late and great Louis Armstrong:

I see angels sing,
Miracles too.
The earth is imbued
And being renewed.
And I think to myself,
What a wonderful world.

What a wonderful, enchanted world, indeed!

Adapted from Rediscovering Christmas by AJ Sherrill. Copyright © 2024 by AJ Sherrill. Published by WaterBrook, an imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC. Used by permission. ISBN: 9780593445532. Excerpted from pages 83-94.

AJ Sherrill is the pastor of Saint Peter’s Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and also teaches doctoral courses on preaching and the Enneagram at Fuller Theological Seminary.

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