Michael and the Angel

Michael David is our little worshipper. For instance, he will often encourage you to sing along with him as he sings praise and worship songs that he has heard at church or on the radio. If Martha or I am singing a song, he'll put aside what he's doing and join in. When I would practice at home on the guitar, he'd run and grab his brother's toy guitar and accompany me. He was the favorite little brother of our ministry kids in Hollister, especially during worship practice. It was often hard to pull him off the drums, and even harder to get our young drummers to let him down. So there he would remain glowing and wide-eyed on their laps while we practiced.

These days, Michael leads our family bedtime prayers. He cues each of us to say our turn in the prayers. When he prays he often does so for the geckos in our house or for his Star Wars toys. Lord knows they need prayer the way the boys play with them, but occasionally he'll pray some surprisingly deep requests for one of us or his neighborhood mates. It's one of the cutest things I have ever heard or seen, and I'm sure it is not lost to God either.

To date, most of the supernatural experiences we have experienced in the home have involved our oldest, Danny Boy. It seems that the Lord works with him in the prophetic. He's been a witness to several encounters in the home and has had encounters of his own. He's interacted with the Lord Jesus twice in dreams. But God has shown us that Michael also has a special place in our ministry.

The Lord demonstrated this to me one night in 2005 while I was in prayer. We had been under spiritual attack while ministering in our home to, of all people, Mormon missionaries. We had felt a heavy oppression on all sides during our eight-week long fellowship with them. There was a war going in our home in the supernatural as we attempted to share the truth of the Bible and its only prophet worth following, Jesus Christ (Deuteronomy 18:15-18, Acts 3:22).

After crying out to God for divine favor and protection, I discerned a word from the Lord for our family. One by one He called us out by name declaring "I am with you." But when He got to Michael, He changed His name. God doesn't call Michael by his first name. He knows him as "David," his middle name.

As I type this on September 11th 2006, I finally realize what God was doing when He changed his name. We have never made a huge deal about this experience and have only shared it with a few of our pastor friends (all named David) and our parents. But now as I think about his penchant for worship and his heart for God, the name "David" describes him to a tee. God must have known this all along. On another occasion He proved it to me and Martha.

It was a Saturday, sometime during the early Spring of 2005. At the time, we were living on military housing in beautiful Monterey. Having the weekend off from watch, Martha and I finally had some time for yard work. I had sat down on the sofa with my laptop as she was finishing up tending to her plants in the backyard. Danny Boy was busy playing across the street at his friend's house while Michael was curled up next to me playing with one of his toys.

I was busy coming up with fliers for our next sectional youth ministries event. While plugging away, I was soothed by the sounds of Martha spraying water outside and Michael tinkering with his toy. Although I was not fully engaged with his playing, I knew he was quite involved with his toy because he was adding his own sound effects.

After a couple minutes, the sounds around me began to dim somewhat as I delved more into the work on the screen in front of me. It took me a little while to realize that Michael was not making the same sound effects anymore, but was making other sounds. As I typed a little more, I overheard him giggling. Smiling at his giggles I continued with my design work dragging my mouse around without looking at him, thinking that he was giggling at Martha.

But, then I heard Martha through the window behind me restarting the hose in the back porch and I realized that I had not heard her come in through the sliding door. All the while, Michael was still giggling. At that moment, I stopped what I was doing and looked over to him. He had dropped his toy into his lap and was staring ahead with the biggest smile I had ever seen on his face. I was still looking at him when he let out another volley of laughter.

Quickly I looked over my laptop screen to see who or what he was looking at. He was looking in the direction of our stairwell. Not seeing anything I looked back at Michael. In the split second that I was turning my head back to Michael I saw a cloud of light streak from the stairwell. I quickly looked back but did not see anything more.

I then did a double-take to Michael. He was still wearing that smile on his face and looking in the direction of the stairwell. His smile wore off and then he turned to look at me. He shared a brief knowing grin with me and then straight with picked up his toy and continued his playing. Chills ran down my spine as I realized that he had been laughing with an angel on the stairwell.

I looked back but did not see anything after staring for several moments. I sat there with my laptop burning into my pant legs not able to do anymore work. I saved my work and powered down. I was putting away my gear when Martha came in and walked through the house to call Danny Boy in for dinner. I did not get a chance to stop her. I decided to save it for dinner.

Over dinner, I was excited to share with Martha and Danny Boy what Michael and I had seen together. Martha sat smiling as she fed Michael. She said, "you're not going to believe this, but I had the same experience with Michael earlier today." "Really!" I almost jumped out of my chair.

She said that she had been sitting on the sofa doing something while Michael was at her feet playing with his toy. All of a sudden, she realized that Michael had stopped playing and was giggling at something. She thought he was looking up at me. When she looked up to see what he was looking at, she saw a a figure in the form of a cloud standing at the base of the stairwell. No sooner had she perceived what it was, that it vanished. She looked back at Michael, who then looked at her briefly and then continued his playing.

Now, of course Monterey can get a bit foggy and often times the low clouds get bright as they reflect the morning sun, but not in the middle of your house at the bottom of a stairwell late in the afternoon! The experience could have been relegated to our collective imagination if for one fact, Martha and I both were expecting to see each other as the object of Michael's stare and giggles.

Sure, he could have imagined something and projected the reality to our consciousness somehow through some self-fulfilling prophecy or mind-control. The only problem with that hypothesis is that we are talking about a one-and-a-half year old, who stopped playing with his toy to engage in socialization with something that apparently was making him laugh. Furthermore, Martha and I had almost the same experience, a couple hours apart without sharing what we saw until dinner time. Another point worthy of mentioning is that up until that point Martha had never seen an angel and she is not given to sensationalism or flights of fancy. She's about the most genuine and non-flakiest person I have ever known.

I used to wonder what Jesus meant when He said "see that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven" (Matthew 18:10). Now thanks to Michael and the Angel, I know that God is not looking down so much as He is smiling at eye level with all the little ones in the world right now. Bad things may happen to them in this world, but it does not change the fact that God is taking notes from their angels. Maybe the brightness of their eyes and the resonance of their laughter has a lot to do with the little bit of glory that is brought to them from Heaven.

Today, as I close, I thought about all the children who are orphans, including those who lost a parent on September 11th, 2001. I believe God put it in my heart to share Michael's story because it's their story as well. Despite what grown ups may think, God is with them and He knows them by name. Please join me in prayer for orphans and little ones everywhere who are forgotten not by God but by man. Let's pray that they will receive God's blessings from our hearts and our hands.

Amen.