Angels are enigmatic characters. They turn up at odd intervals throughout the Bible, usually as messengers, and do their bit and then they're away again. Where to exactly? And what goes on in the spiritual realms anyway?
Besides a few smatterings of scripture, there's a wealth of apocryphal and anecdotal information about angels but the amount we really know is fairly slim. Its all guess-work and extrapolation. Personally, I think that angels are both much more and much less than human. It's very hard to pin down beings of eternity, though.
Even more enigmatic is the Holy Spirit. We know what she can do - the Bible is full of examples - but the exact influence in everyday situations is impossible to determine. Sometimes the Spirit gives gifts directly, in others she uses our 'natural' gifts to achieve God's aims. My own experience, however, is that when I look back over some parts of my life I don't have to work very hard to spot examples of direct and pretty hefty involvement.
How exactly the angels work with the Spirit is anybody's guess. What do angels actually do? Why does God need them? Half the explanation may lie in the question of why God needs us. The answer to that is, of course, that he doesn't - he just likes us around.
He's nice like that.
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