Lord

Have your

Angels every day

Watch and guide

Us on our way

The belief in angels can be traced far back into antiquity.  Pagans like Menander and Plutarch, and Neo-Platonists, like Plotinus, held it. It was also the belief of the Babylonians and Assyrians, as their monuments testify (the figure of a guardian angel now in the British Museum once decorated an Assyrian palace); and Nabopolassar, father of Nebuchadnezzar, said: “God sent a deity (cherub) of grace to go at my side.”

Throughout scripture there are numerous instances in which angels interceded to help mortals.  In Genesis an angel delivers Lot from danger; in Exodus, God says to Moses, “My angel shall go before thee;”  an angel is sent to rescue Daniel from the lion’s den.  In the New Testament, there are many stories of intermediaries between God and humankind:  the angel who comforted Christ in the garden; the angel who delivered St. Peter from prison; and dozens of other examples of angels sent as emissaries to care for God’s children on earth, even in mundane matters.

So we have evidence that angels have been sent in the past, but do they still walk among us today?  If we open  our eyes to the signs around us, we will clearly see that God is watching over us, and that miracles can happen in our lives too.

My granddaughter Claire, at the age of 22, is a seasoned world traveler.  She has flown throughout the United States, even to Alaska, to Europe, South America, and Asia, sometimes on her own, and visited France, England, Spain, China, and India with layovers in Dubai. Recently she planned a visit to her sister in Ohio (Helen is a third-year Industrial Engineering student at R.I.T. participating in a co-op program at the Emerson plant in Sidney, OH, this semester), a mere puddle jump for this young veteran of the skies. 

She left her office in the Wall Street area of Manhattan at 4:30 on Friday afternoon–allowing enough time to make the two-stop subway and short shuttle ride to catch the 6:30 flight out of LaGuardia. However, commuter traffic and construction around the airport caused a delay.  At six o’clock she was still on the bus at a non-walkable distance from her destination.  On her phone she checked the schedule for the next available flight.  It would not be until Saturday morning and would be considerably more expensive than her already purchased ticket.

As she was weighing the inconvenience and extra cost of making the change, the road congestion cleared, and a wave of jubilation flowed through the anxious riders. The bus arrived at the American Airlines terminal at 6:10.  Fortunately, Claire had been pre-approved for check-in, which made it easier for her to get through security.  Encumbered by her carry-on luggage, she raced to the gate, breathlessly arriving at the portable podium that had been set up to accommodate some of the departures.  The station was staffed by an attendant without benefit of amplification, so she was shouting announcements and instructions above the din.  There were three destinations posted on the overhead boarding schedule:  Charlotte, NC, leaving at 6:28; Dayton, OH, leaving at 6:30; and Greensboro, NC, at 6:34.

Claire heard the attendant announce the last call for boarding the flight to Charlotte.  Whew!  She was out of breath, and her heart was pounding; but she was relieved that she had made it and joined the queue waiting to board.  Dayton would be called next.  A minute or so later, the announcement was made for boarding the flight to Greensboro.  Claire thought she had misheard. Uncharacteristically, she pushed ahead of the crowd, cut the line, approached the attendant and asked about the flight to Dayton. “Oh, that one already left,” she was told.  Annoyed passengers standing nearby looked askance at her and corroborated that the flight had been called earlier, and the shuttle bus taking the passengers out to the plane had already gone. Tension and frustration erupted into tears.

Then, from behind her, Claire heard a male voice ask the same question about the Dayton flight.  She turned to see an average size, average height, average looking man in uniform with hand extended holding an ID badge.  “I’m the captain of that plane,” he said, “and there’s one more passenger who needs to get on board.”  The attendant immediately picked up the phone and alerted the crew waiting on the tarmac; then called a van to transport the pilot and his last passenger. On the short ensuing ride, the pilot explained that he had brought the plane into LaGuardia, but to a different gate, so after a brief break he had to get himself through the terminal to reunite with his assignment.

Claire’s angel that day was named Steve, and he even had wings.