Touched By An Angel

Daniel 8
15 As I, Daniel, was trying to understand the meaning of this vision, someone who looked like a man stood in front of me. 16 And I heard a human voice calling out from the Ulai River, “Gabriel, tell this man the meaning of his vision.”
17 As Gabriel approached the place where I was standing, I became so terrified that I fell with my face to the ground. “Son of man,” he said, “you must understand that the events you have seen in your vision relate to the time of the end.”
18 While he was speaking, I fainted and lay there with my face to the ground. But Gabriel roused me with a touch and helped me to my feet.

A couple of days ago, I was musing on seeing the Glory of the Lord, and how terrifying that must be. Now, in today’s reading, Daniel describes how terrifying it was simply to see an angel of the Lord (Gabriel). In fact, Daniel is so overcome with fear, he faints and has to be revived by Gabriel. Yeah, we like the nice-nice pictures of angels and of God, but when we see what Scripture says about the appearance of an angel and how it caused Daniel to faint, well…maybe we should take all this a little more seriously than we are known to do.