“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39). An angel is literally “one who is sent forth.” Whenever any of us do any kind act of service for any of our brothers or sisters, we do so as ministering angels sent forth to do God’s will. We sometimes may be angels without even knowing it, as God places us exactly where He needs us without telling us why we are there or revealing how much good our unplanned and unconsidered kindness does for the one to whom we were sent. We may be called to minister to someone and do it with bad grace, or do a poor job, or maybe we even do everything just right but the person whose life we are trying to bless doesn’t accept our offer. However much or little self awareness we might have with all of the ways that we fail to make things better or succeed in making them much, much worse, we all can think of times when someone has been sent as a ministering angel into our lives, and through some combination of negligence, ineptitude, or pure malice have made our lives worse for their interaction with us. When this happens, we have to remember, “except in the case of His only perfect Begotten Son, imperfect people are all God has ever had to work with. That must be terribly frustrating to Him, but He deals with it. So should we. And when [we] see imperfection, remember that the limitation is not in the divinity of the work. As one gifted writer has suggested, when the infinite fulness is poured forth, it is not the oil’s fault if there is some loss because finite vessels can’t quite contain it all. Those finite vessels include you and me, so be patient and kind and forgiving.” If we are not careful, we can allow the imperfect ministering of imperfect angels to drive a wedge between us and the Savior. As Paul says, not even angels can separate us from the love of God. God could personally minister to each and every one of us, but He sends forth His imperfect angels to bring about His great and marvelous work through small and simple things.
