angels wings

It required no stretch of the imagination for me to come up with the title for this photo. The photo shows angel outfits I found in a local theater company's dressing room. Now whether the costumes themselves are a stretch of the imagination as a representation of real angels is itself a different question. It certainly prompts a series of challenging questions.

I start with this question: do angels need wings for Heaven or for earth? Or both? Isaiah (I believe) indicates that angels have a bunch of wings. Six, I seem to recall. Which suggests that flight is especially difficult in Heaven--or perhaps that six wings is way cooler than two. (Which is obvious.) But why do angels need them at all? Again, presumably for flying, but why do they need to fly? Where in the world are they going? (Picking up soy milk at the store?) Speaking only for meownself, I can’t help but thinking it would definitely be riveting to watch six-winged angels flying around doing angelic things.

I doubt angels need wings on earth because most stories depict them as popping in and out of our world. They zip in and zip out and don’t do a lot of traveling. Plus, if I were an angel and needed to get from one point to another, say, from a car accident to a Christian music recording studio, I wouldn't fly. I'd pop back into heaven and then pop back down to earth. Sort of like a heavenly Star Trek Teletransporter

But if angels have wings in Heaven, will we? And if we won’t, will we secretly be jealous of the angels? (Answer: yes.) Or worse, will we be like penguins—with wings but still incapable of flight? And if we don’t have wings, will we still have dreams about wanting to fly? Will we sleep at all in heaven? But what if we want to take a nap? Surely naps are part of the R in R.I.P.

See, not all the theological questions have been answered.