Unexpected Angels

Three women reshape history, reminding us that God often works through the overlooked, not the powerful, to bring about unexpected deliverance.

Some cultural references have surprising staying power.

Back in the late 1970s, television viewers tuned into a new crime-fighting trio known as Charlie’s Angels — three women who worked as private investigators for the mysterious Charlie Townsend. The premise was simple but irresistible: criminals underestimated these women, assuming they were ornamental rather than operational. This mistake never lasted long. The Angels were always smarter than expected, tougher than assumed and far more capable than their adversaries realized.

Over the decades, the concept kept resurfacing. There were feature films in 2000 and 2003 starring Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu. Then, in 2019, another generation of Angels appeared in a reboot directed by Elizabeth Banks, featuring Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska. New cast, new storylines, but the same underlying idea: the people others overlook often become the ones who change the outcome.

This storytelling pattern ...