Cries from the Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

is left out. People recite it many times a day all over
the world, mostly heedless of the power and blessing in the words.
Through this prayer we enter God’s presence, as when Moses
approached the burning bush and God said, “Take off your shoes,
you are on holy ground.”
    Thousands of pages have been written about the Lord’s Prayer. I
believe much of its power lies in its brevity and simplicity. When
we have acted in haste or offended the spirit of love, we need to
ask for forgiveness. In hours of temptation, we need to ask to be
led safely, and we need to be provided for and protected day by
day. Above and beyond that, we need the Holy Spirit to fill our
hearts and change us from our very foundations. For this to happen
we must ask, “Thy will be done.” And we must mean it.

God’s Messengers
    As our prayers go up to God
, so his spirit comes down to us.
Sometimes we may feel a personal response, as though a divine
messenger had delivered a specific answer to need. Then there are
moments of closeness to God, when we feel palpably carried by his
strength, perhaps even by the loving arms of some unearthly being. Such times, though perhaps foreign to the experience of some,
are granted more often than we imagine. They do happen.
    Whether as messengers, intermediaries, or divine guides that
shelter and protect us from danger or temptation, angels are mysterious beings used by God for many purposes. In his Letter to the
Colossians, the apostle Paul refers to angels when he says that God
created all things “that are in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers –
all things were created through him and for him.”
    What else could Paul be referring to when he speaks of invisible
powers? Despite the enormous interest in angels nowadays, few
people seem to take them seriously, or to grasp their significance.
They are often dismissed as childish nonsense, even by believers. In
contrast, a text from the early church father Origen indicates that
the first Christians not only revered angels, but had great confidence in their power as advocates with direct access to the divine:
    When anyone prays, the angels that minister to God and watch
over humankind gather round about him and join with him in
his prayer. Nor is that all. Every Christian –each of the “little
ones” who are in the church – has an angel of his own, who
beholds the face of the Father and looks upon the Godhead of
the Creator. This angel prays with us and works with us, as far as
he can, to obtain the things for which we ask.
    “The angel of the Lord,” so it is written, “encamps beside
those who fear the Lord and delivers them” (Ps. 33:8), while
Jacob speaks of “the angel who delivers me from all evils” (Gen.
48:16): and what he says is true not of himself only but of all
those who set their trust in God. It would seem, then, that when
a number of the faithful meet together genuinely for the glory
of Christ, since they all fear the Lord, each of them will have, encamped beside him, his own angel whom God has appointed to
guard him and care for him. So, when the saints are assembled,
there will be a double church, one of men and one of angels.
    In my younger years, I did not give much thought to the presence
of angels, though I did not question their existence. I felt sure they
were a power to be reckoned with, and in our home they were
never talked about lightly. In recent years, however, I have often
pondered the words of Jesus: “If only one sinner repents, the angels in heaven will rejoice.” That is an amazing statement, and
ought to remind us how significant each of us is in God’s eyes. The
protection people experience each day – often without rational
explanation – also points to this.
    In the Letter to the Hebrews we are told that angels may come to
us in human form. Gillian,