Bad Poetry: Angels' Messages

This week's Poets & Storytellers United prompt is a bit of a challenge, because...

If I knew what the message was going to be,

Why would the angel need to deliver it to me?

Still, the biblical record gives us one clear clue:

If an angel is ever sent to speak to you,

Though light and swift as thought, it carries the weight

Of glory, authority, power, so great

That the first thing it always finds that it has got

To tell mortals, on meeting them, will be "FEAR NOT."

(Graphic from Google.)

What are angels? The word means "message" or "messenger." In some traditions it's used to mean anyone bearing a message from God, which would include even the little donkey that spoke to Balaam in the book of Judges, much less the minister or even a friend from church. However, in the Bible it seems to mean a different kind of thing--a spiritual being that may look human, but is not. The fools in the city of Sodom thought they wanted to rape the angels who came to visit Lot--looking at them from a distance. The angels allowed them to think that to show Lot how vile his townsmen were and confirm that Lot was decent enough to want to protect his guests. People who get close enough to converse with angels always seem startled by them. Even an angel in the form of a child would still be a spirit messenger from God. People tremble at the thought of what an angel could possibly have to tell them. 

Do I believe in angels? Well...if you believe in a Creator God for whom all is possible, you can't believe there may not be angels. I have no personal knowledge of the subject. Angels can probably take any form. In the Bible some of them appear as strange, symbolic alien creatures, and some look like mortals from a distance. However, though contemporary artists love to paint and sculpt women and children angels, in the Bible all the angels who take human form appear as young men, and Jesus describes them as an army. That doesn't mean that the ones who protect children might not appear in female or child form...but we are clearly told that they have no family lives. Angels are created, not born. Some think that makes their gender masculine. Some point out that in nature, when living things work but don't reproduce--like worker bees--their gender is feminine. I say neuter...expecting that in Heaven we shall all be surprised, and have a good laugh at the things we believed when we were only able to try to imagine a spiritual plane of existence with mortal, material brains.