How Do We Know What an Angel Looks Like?

For Thanksgiving, my 7-year-old daughter, Hope, made a prayer turkey at church. Her class took small loaves of bread, lacquered them, stuck a stylized turkey head in one side and little wooden ice cream spoons in the other side for tail feathers. The bread, head, and one side of each of the "feathers" was somewhat painted to look like a turkey. The other side of each tail feathers had an item for which she could be thankful. On Thanksgiving, with all the family around we passed her turkey and each took a tail feather. Then we prayed giving thanks for what was on our tail feather.

She got the idea to do this for Christmas. She brainstormed and came up with a "prayer tree". With help from my wife, she took a cone of green styrofoam and made an angel out of bead kit to top it. Then she cut out tiny paper ornaments just large enough to write an item to pray for on each one. She attached these to the tree with pins that have colorful heads.

We sat down to eat last night and I noticed the darling little tree with the angel on top. We've been studying "angelology" in David Moss' Sunday School class where we have been covering the scriptures that give us information about angels. There is much information, but not generally the information people have invented or derived about angels. So I asked Hope what that was on top of the tree.

"It's an angel, daddy."

"How do you know it's an angel?"

"It has a halo," she replied.

"How do you know that angels have halos?"

She hesitated realizing she didn't have and answer. "It has wings," she said.

"How do you know angels have wings?"

"Uh. It's white."

"How do you know angels are white?"

"It has a skirt."

"How do you know angels wear skirts?"

She wrinkled her face in quasi-frustration. "Well! It said so on the box!"

After a round of laughter from the family, including my daughter, she said, "I get it from your side of the family, you know."