- Bear up
Psalm 91:12
They shall bear thee up in their hands,
lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.
The angels that God commissions to serve and protect those who dwell in the presence of God will bear you up in their hands, so that you don’t stub your toe. Is that really true? People stub their toe all the time and the angels didn’t prevent it. But we can’t really know how many times they did prevent stubbing, and when the toe was stubbed it may be in insistent clumsiness of the human overriding the protecting ability of the angels. Or God prevented their assistance.
We don’t really know how this promise works out in actual fact; we can only take the words as they read and believe the promise it contains. We cannot understand how beings that are only spirits can affect with their hands anything in the physical and material world. That connection between the invisible and visible worlds has been, and still is, the subject of mountains of speculation and experiences that can be neither proven nor disproven. Sometimes these encounters are good ones, like “touched by an angel.” Sometimes they are harmful curses and spells.
There is a vast amount of literature and research involving paranormal activities that are neutral or harmful. Witches curse; healers heal; fortunetellers foretell; psychics contact; UFO’s are sighted; evil spirits connect to drugs and mental illness; and, yes, angels touch. The angel touches for good are just as unexplainable, and uncontrollable, as demon touches for evil. The invisible world of angels and demons is beyond the reach of scientific inquiry; neither will we ever be able to examine the when and how of connection between the two worlds. How do angels hold me up in their hands? I don’t have a clue. Face it: this is a mystery.
If God said it and promised it in His Word I believe it. Faith does not require understanding or explaining or reasoning. I don’t have to explain how angels hold me up; I simply need to know that they do. I trust God to keep His promise and I leave it there. I don’t have to explain everything about how the blood of Jesus cleanses me from all sin; I just know that it does. I don’t have any idea how my body will rise from the dead, but I have absolutely no doubt that it will. God’s Word and Promise fill in the gaps in my limited understanding. “God is” explains all mysteries.