Words With Wings - Grace Noll Crowell

1877–1969

She was poet laureate of Texas. She published over thirty-five books during her lifetime. In the mid-1900s, she was so wildly popular that her husband quit his job to manage her career and answer the hundreds of letters she received monthly from an admiring public. Grace Noll Crowell had a life that many must have looked at and said, “It would be nice to have a life like that.”

Her life was not as easy as it must have appeared from the outside, though. In 1906, she became very ill, and her recovery took years. During her years of sickness, she began to write poetry.

If you spend some time in her poetry, you get a glimpse of the hope and faith that she had, even though she was suffering while writing much of it. Her poetry was a way for her to express her continuing trust in God during her sufferings and a way to encourage others. She’s quoted as saying, “I would like to write poetry that will help others who are suffering as I am.”

In some of Grace’s poetry, she wrote about angels. But not angels that sit on clouds, playing harps and singing all day long, like those often depicted in modern folk art; she wrote about angels that God sends to help us through trials and dangers. She wrote of angels that can loose the “yoke of weariness” and make hurts grow “faint and dim as some forgotten song.” She imagined someone at the end of a struggle finding an angel “bent above him in the night to strike his chains away and set him free.”

Biblically, angels are God’s warriors, God’s messengers, and they offer the Lord’s protection in dangerous situations. Grace Noll Crowell vividly depicted this reality in exalted language.

When you’re facing difficult times, do you ever think about the angels that are sent to fight for you and protect you? It can be a great comfort to know that a celestial support team has your back.

If you make the LORD your refuge, if you make the Most High your shelter, no evil will conquer you; no plague will come near your home. For he will order his angels to protect you wherever you go.

Psalm 91:9-11