Sometimes, it seems, our day is a constant struggle with evil. But realizing the constant action of angel thoughts from God, we find that our day can be an inspiring meeting with good. The action of angels, making our day a good one, is the force of right ideas based on the all-power of good, God and His expression, and on the impotence of evil. To live a day of good, we need to accept these divine messages and put them to use in our thinking.
The Bible tells us: "Ye are not come unto . . . blackness, and darkness, and tempest, . . . but ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels." Heb. 12:18, 22; This spiritual truth of our day is that we are confronted each moment not with disturbing difficulties but with the blessings of "an innumerable company of angels." This higher viewpoint shows the immeasurable good awaiting us.
There is nothing mysterious about angels. According to Christian Science they are spiritual thoughts coming from God and leading to God. They are always present, not just in emergencies. In fact, they are lighting the way for us all the time. The supreme power of God, with each divine quality, is expressed in them. They are not vague and ephemeral but definite and eternal.
The very perfection of God, the one Mind, or Spirit, creating only good, denies reality to our seeming, material difficulties. His angels bring His power to bear on our human need, which is fundamentally our need to know the uninvaded allness of good and the nothingness of evil. This understanding can solve all difficulties.
How do we become conscious of angels? By gratefully turning to God—wholeheartedly, adoringly, trustingly. This opens our thought to the spiritual ideas already at hand. We discover the inspiring, healing action of angels. An angelic sense of things is a feeling of well-being, a conviction that good is all there is. We need to cherish the revelations of reality, hold to them, and put them into practice each day.
Evil, seeming to loom very big at times, originates in mortal mind, the belief in finite life apart from Spirit. Evil would fool us into thinking there is a time when good turns into evil or a place where good is not present or where another power rivals omnipotent good. But if we listen, we find an angel already there, telling us that this appearance of something wrong is only part of mortal mind's dream, its own delusion of having created another world, the opposite of the only real world, made by God. The spell of evil can be quickly broken by the realization that it is merely error, mortal mind's dream.
The action of angel intuitions makes our days more orderly, our thoughts more disciplined. Instead of drifting, we take control of ourselves. These intuitions keep our thought focused on divine Principle, keep it God-centered instead of matter-centered. If our thinking wanders when we pray, angels bring it back to where we left off.
Divine messages remind us at the right time of specific things we need to remember. They keep us alert to avoid distractions, supply the precise insight to meet our brother's need, antidote material reasoning with spiritual logic. They supply intelligence and love, which connect us with right action.
To let angels take charge of our days makes our way become more productive, more progressive. They remind us that our motive each day should be to express God. They save us from being engulfed in self-satisfaction or self-righteousness. Imparting wisdom, they teach us how to be the most helpful—when to speak and when to be silent.
If our day seems arduous, angelic thoughts will reverse any seeming weariness with the spiritual reasoning that since God is never impoverished by giving, neither are we, His likeness. A sense of being drained of energy and joy is merely a seeming absence of the inspiration of ever-present Love. The ceaseless flow of inexhaustible good is always with us. Our unfailing strength is not in broken cisterns of the material senses but in eternal springs of living waters of Truth.
Mrs. Eddy says, "A danger besets thy path?—a spiritual behest, in reversion, awaits you." Message to The Mother Church for 1902, p. 19. And on the inscription page (iii) of Science and Health appear these lines of hers:
Oh! Thou hast heard my prayer;
And I am blest!
This is Thy high behest:—
Thou here, and everywhere.
This angel message that God is "here, and everywhere" signifies permanent safety for His children. And this safety does not consist in our being in a realm of light safe from the darkness outside. Instead, it is the realization of the allness of light and the nullity of darkness. Angels tell us there is really no evil anywhere, for good is All.
The presence of God's thoughts counteracts fear. A feeling of fear is only the supposed reverse of a heavenly assurance just at hand, an angel waiting at our door with a higher sense of God's infinitude. We can replace a sense of the enormity of evil and of our own incapacity to cope with it with the true sense of God's omnipotence. As we do so, we find we are already supplied with sufficient courage and inspiration to counteract the suggestions of fear and gain the higher sense of things awaiting us.
If we seem to be enveloped in mental darkness, we can trustingly expect the coming of bright light. When we remember that angels are always with us, we can never be discouraged by outward appearances. Angels tell us of spiritual rebirth, which can dispel the darkness of resistance to Christ, Truth.
Unwillingness to sacrifice a false sense of self for the true is not our own thinking. It is an imposition of mortal mind, which would hold up progress and prevent healing. But divine intuitions remind us we are not the old man of the flesh but the new man of Spirit, completely willing to obey God. This breaks the seeming hold of resistance, allowing us to go forward in the light of the new spiritual adventure awaiting us. Then we no longer want to cling to old, worn-out thought patterns, for we see them as very undesirable, entirely unreal.
Thus angels minister to our days. These intuitions guide us; these inspirations lift us. There is never a situation where these ideas we need are not present. How great is God's love for us—to give us His angels. How deeply we can thank Him for them! And this thankfulness of heart blossoms into obedience, into gladly staying on "mount Sion" with God's "innumerable company of angels."
