Jealous of angels

What do you think? Is it wrong to be jealous of angels? I sure hope not, because I'm here to tell you, I am. And why shouldn't I be? After all, they got to see almost everything I would give my eye teeth to have witnessed. O.K., like us they missed the first eternity during which God occupied Himself with thoughts and deeds we cannot even begin to guess at. But as the article on angels in The Illustrated Bible Dictionary tells, "The OT implies that angels were the joyful witnesses of, though not necessarily active participants in, God's act of creation".:

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it?. When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (Job 38:4-7).

Yes, I'm jealous! Aren't you? I doubt the Big Bang theory accurately describes what happened in the first moments of the universe, but I also suspect that the very first thing the angels saw would have been an eye-splitting flash of indescribable magnitude and even beauty. And then they looked on moment by moment, year by year, as God proceeded to stretch out the heavens (Is. 44:24). Wouldn't you love to have seen that? And the formation of the earth? They would have been eye witnesses to all phases of creation. They would have seen the weird creatures of the Ediacaran period of geological history, not to mention the famous Burgess Shale animals. They could tell you how many different kinds of trilobites and ammonites came and went over the course of millions of years. Perhaps they took dinosaur rides. (Sound crazy? But hey, why not?) The mystery of hominids is no mystery to them. They could

describe in detail Neanderthal man's daily life, and tell you whether or not he could talk. They stood by God's side as He picked out chemical elements from the ground and assembled them into the first Homo sapiens - Adam. They witnessed the plagues of Egypt and the splitting of the Red Sea in Moses' time. When David slew Goliath and Daniel defied death in the lion's den, they were there.

When Jesus was born, they sang for joy (Luke 2:13). Unseen by the disciples, they followed Jesus wherever He went and saw His every wondrous deed and heard His every word. They witnessed the raising of Lazarus and saw the look on Mary Magdalene's face when she recognized her risen Lord. Above all, for untold billions of years, they have seen the glory of God at a spectacularly deeper level than we can begin to imagine (Matt. 18:10). Oh, what would I give to have seen what they have seen and see what they can see. To top it all off, whichever way you slice it, the simple fact is that angels have lived billions of years longer than us.

And yet, you and I are more fortunate than they! We are heirs of salvation, whereas angels are merely ministering spirits (Hebrew. 1:14) to those heirs. Jesus Christ died for us, not for angels. We are to be like Jesus Christ (1 John 3:2), and are His brethren (Heb. 2:11), something to which the angels will never aspire. Yes, though for a little while lower than angels (Ps. 8:5), followers of Jesus Christ will eventually be higher than the angels — they will even judge them (1 Cor. 6:3). Stop and think. Doesn't commonsense itself teach you that those things created later in time will outshine those which came before? God surely doesn't trade in anticlimaxes. The time is coming when angels will envy — in a godly way, of course — Jesus' faithful, glorified followers. Please ponder the implications of this spectacular truth.