This morning I walked in to a bunch of New York Times newspaper clippings scattered across my desk, each one from a different coworker, every one the same story—about an angel with a cellphone.
It seems a Dutch sculptor won a 1997 competition to create new statues for the ancient St. John the Evangelist Cathedral in the Netherlands. Ton Mooy, the sculptor, made 40 statues, 14 of them angels, one of them highly unconventional.
The Little Angel, slouching slightly, in blue jeans and with a laptop bag over her shoulder, has a cellphone pressed against her ear and the look my 14-year-old daughter has 
when she’s listening intently to a friend and shouldn’t be disturbed. The body language and downward glance suggest, This is an important call.
“Angels are there to guide, to protect people,” Ton Mooy said about his thoroughly modern take on a beloved subject. “They get messages from above. How do you show that? With a cellphone!”
A local couple couldn’t have agreed more. They printed business cards with a picture of the Little Angel—and her very own telephone number. The wife is the “voice” of Little Angel, and has answered calls from all kinds of people, some asking for prayers, some for solace, some looking for a moment’s companionship. Her favorite callers are children wanting to know if the Little Angel is cold, or worrying that she has no umbrella in the rain! “In most cases,” she says, “there is laughter.”
And why not, when spreading joy is also the work of the angels. I sure got a laugh out of the dozen or so copies of this story torn from yesterday’s paper. And I felt blessed that all these earth angels I work with read this story and thought of me.
