He was just about to fall asleep when he heard it—a bump, then a metallic click, like someone gently opening his front gate. James sat up, heart pounding. Who would be outside this late? He wasn’t expecting anyone. His old pickup was in the shop, the porch light burned out last week, and the power had flickered during the storm.
He grabbed his phone for the flashlight and moved to the window, cautiously peeking through the curtain.
No one there.
Only silence. The kind that hums in your ears.
But in that moment, James couldn’t shake it. This overwhelming feeling that he was not alone—and that whoever—or whatever—was near, wasn’t out to harm him. Quite the opposite. It felt like peace had just walked across his front yard.
Maybe you’ve felt that too. Not in bolts of lightning, not in trumpet-blared miracles, but in the quiet places where fear fades—unexplainably. Moments where harm was near, but didn’t come. Where help came too quickly to make sense.
“Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers,” the writer of Hebrews reminds us, “for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2, NIV).
Scripture doesn’t present angels as wisps of light with wings playing harps. They’re messengers. Warriors. Guides. Sometimes seen. Often not. In Acts 12, Peter is in prison, shackled between two guards, sleeping so deeply an angel has to strike him on the side to wake him. Chains fall off. Gates swing open. Peter walks straight past two guard posts and only when he’s outside, in the cold air alone, does he realize: that was real. That was God. That was deliverance with footsteps.
And then: “The angel left him.”
He probably blinked in the moonlight, just like James did at his window. Alone again, but not really. Safer now. Known by Heaven.
This is who angels are—agents of a God who is close enough to send company.
Psalm 34:7 whispers it: “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.”
Encamps. Not visits. Not check-ins or walk-bys. God’s protection isn’t a pass-through. It stays. It surrounds.
So are angels still active today?
Thousands of testimonies from across the globe echo yes. The nurse who felt a presence with her while doing CPR, though no one was nearby. The child who described a “man in light” standing at the foot of the bed the night a fever broke. My own friend who missed a highway pile-up by three seconds, after deciding to delay her drive for no real reason. She later wept, not from what happened—but from what didn’t.
Heaven, it seems, still moves on our behalf.
But here’s the rippling truth you may not see coming: angels don’t always look like what we’d expect. That person who paid your grocery bill when your card declined. The stranger who sat with you in the ER when no one else came. The kind man who changed your tire and waved you off without his name.
Sometimes, the help God sends looks awfully human. Because sometimes, He wraps the supernatural in the ordinary.
Scripture says we may entertain angels without knowing it. That’s a breathtaking possibility. But it also means this: not every angel feels like a miracle. Sometimes they feel like a moment. A lifted burden. A deeply human kindness that leaves a trace of something more.
Would we recognize an angel if we saw one?
Maybe not. But the result lingers. Peace that replaces panic. A clarity that silences confusion. A door of escape you couldn’t have opened alone.
The biggest mistake we can make is assuming God is silent just because the rescue didn’t come with wings and lightning.
Sometimes God sends a light. Sometimes a voice. Sometimes an arm around the shoulder. He sends messengers both seen and unseen. But always—always—He sees. He hears. He answers.
There’s a quiet comfort in knowing that unseen armies still move at His command. That when we feel alone, we’re not. That the hallway outside your hospital room, the cab of your truck, the doorway of your grief—all of them—may just be encampments of Heaven.
And sometimes, when we least expect it, help walks past the gate.
That’s who He is. And He still is.
He was just about to fall asleep when he heard it—a bump, then a metallic click, like someone gently opening his front gate. James sat up, heart pounding. Who would be outside this late? He wasn’t expecting anyone. His old pickup was in the shop, the porch light burned out last week, and the power had flickered during the storm.
He grabbed his phone for the flashlight and moved to the window, cautiously peeking through the curtain.
No one there.
Only silence. The kind that hums in your ears.
But in that moment, James couldn’t shake it. This overwhelming feeling that he was not alone—and that whoever—or whatever—was near, wasn’t out to harm him. Quite the opposite. It felt like peace had just walked across his front yard.
Maybe you’ve felt that too. Not in bolts of lightning, not in trumpet-blared miracles, but in the quiet places where fear fades—unexplainably. Moments where harm was near, but didn’t come. Where help came too quickly to make sense.
“Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers,” the writer of Hebrews reminds us, “for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2, NIV).
Scripture doesn’t present angels as wisps of light with wings playing harps. They’re messengers. Warriors. Guides. Sometimes seen. Often not. In Acts 12, Peter is in prison, shackled between two guards, sleeping so deeply an angel has to strike him on the side to wake him. Chains fall off. Gates swing open. Peter walks straight past two guard posts and only when he’s outside, in the cold air alone, does he realize: that was real. That was God. That was deliverance with footsteps.
And then: “The angel left him.”
He probably blinked in the moonlight, just like James did at his window. Alone again, but not really. Safer now. Known by Heaven.
This is who angels are—agents of a God who is close enough to send company.
Psalm 34:7 whispers it: “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.”
Encamps. Not visits. Not check-ins or walk-bys. God’s protection isn’t a pass-through. It stays. It surrounds.
So are angels still active today?
Thousands of testimonies from across the globe echo yes. The nurse who felt a presence with her while doing CPR, though no one was nearby. The child who described a “man in light” standing at the foot of the bed the night a fever broke. My own friend who missed a highway pile-up by three seconds, after deciding to delay her drive for no real reason. She later wept, not from what happened—but from what didn’t.
Heaven, it seems, still moves on our behalf.
But here’s the rippling truth you may not see coming: angels don’t always look like what we’d expect. That person who paid your grocery bill when your card declined. The stranger who sat with you in the ER when no one else came. The kind man who changed your tire and waved you off without his name.
Sometimes, the help God sends looks awfully human. Because sometimes, He wraps the supernatural in the ordinary.
Scripture says we may entertain angels without knowing it. That’s a breathtaking possibility. But it also means this: not every angel feels like a miracle. Sometimes they feel like a moment. A lifted burden. A deeply human kindness that leaves a trace of something more.
Would we recognize an angel if we saw one?
Maybe not. But the result lingers. Peace that replaces panic. A clarity that silences confusion. A door of escape you couldn’t have opened alone.
The biggest mistake we can make is assuming God is silent just because the rescue didn’t come with wings and lightning.
Sometimes God sends a light. Sometimes a voice. Sometimes an arm around the shoulder. He sends messengers both seen and unseen. But always—always—He sees. He hears. He answers.
There’s a quiet comfort in knowing that unseen armies still move at His command. That when we feel alone, we’re not. That the hallway outside your hospital room, the cab of your truck, the doorway of your grief—all of them—may just be encampments of Heaven.
And sometimes, when we least expect it, help walks past the gate.
That’s who He is. And He still is.
