The Fourth Sunday of Advent:

We light the Angels' Candle

On the fourth Sunday of Advent the remaining Advent candle is lighted. This is the "Angels' Candle." It represents God's loving, watchful care over us & heralds Jesus' Second Coming.

Acts 1:⁹ After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. ¹⁰ They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. ¹¹ “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

One of my favorite Christmas songs says, "Angels we have heard on high..." The song thrills me! It is partly the beauty of the music, partly the majesty of the words, and partly the emotional impact of the spiritual world opening up to mankind and announcing - heralding, the greatest message ever given to the inhabitants of earth!

Another song states it so majestically, "How wonderful, how marvelous, and my song shall ever be..." this message of His love for me. Jean's favorite song is, "Such Love, such wondrous love...How wonderful is love like this."

I know that the Bible talks about the angels announcing impending doom, Old Testament and New, but my mental image of angels is that of them announcing the birth and then the ascension of Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, Isaiah's King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

If I could present a request to God as to the pageantry of Jesus' Second Coming I would ask for those angels to regroup and lead all of humanity in a great chorus of "Joy to the world, the Lord is come. Let earth receive her king!"

Oh that our world would be sensitive to the world that surrounds us, filled with angels and majesty and infinity...the world of Him who was, and is, and is to come, worlds without end.

"Hark the herald angels sing, glory to the...king!"