The Season of Miracles

We are in the season of miracles. And we all need to believe in a power greater than ourselves.

Many Americans believe in angels:

In fact, about 7 in 10 U.S. adults say they believe in angels, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

“People are yearning for something greater than themselves — beyond their own understanding,” said Jack Grogger, a chaplain for the Los Angeles Angels and a longtime Southern California fire captain who has aided many people in their gravest moments.

They are around us all the time, even when we don’t know. They take different forms and in emergencies, will often take the form of someone who seems familiar.

“I think that they are around us, but it’s in a way that we can’t understand,” Goodwin said. “I don’t know what else to call it except an angel.”

Angels mean different things to different people, and the idea of loved ones becoming heavenly angels after death is neither an unusual belief nor a universally held one.

In his reading of Scripture as an evangelical Protestant, Grogger said he believes angels are something else entirely — they have never been human and are on another level in heaven’s hierarchy. “We are higher than angels,” he said. “We do not become an angel.”