Angel Wings

I have seen the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” more times than I can keep track of or remember. It was a Christmas classic for decades. It is sentimental, mushy and so very outdated by our sophisticated sensibilities these days, but it did have wonderful lessons on life as most of Frank Capra’s movies did. There are two scenes in the movie when bells ring and we are reminded that every time a bell rings another angel gets its wings.

In the movie, Clarence, (the angel second class (no wings as yet) tells George that he is an angel) George looks at Clarence (a befuddled looking old man who claims to be 118 years old) and George says, “well you look like the kind of guardian angel I’d get.”

I believe in angels and believe we all have a guardian angel to guide us, but we do have free will, so when our angel acts like that little voice in our head and tells us that something is a bad idea, we are not obliged to follow the advice and that is usually when the trouble begins.  

I have always liked bells. We had a huge bell from an old country school house on the farm and another smaller one on the back deck. I had a bell in my truck and have one in the car yet today. Most of the time the bell in the car is quiet, just hanging from a piece of twine, but when the car hits a pothole or on a street turn if the pavement shifts much higher or lower the bell goes off and I always think of the movie and wonder what angel just got his/her wings. With the world’s population growing so fast, we need more angels every day, so ring those bells!