REPORTING FOR DUTY: YOUR GUARDIAN ANGEL

by Mariane Holbrook

I believe in guardian angels. I have good reason to.

When I was a teenager, the car in which I was riding flipped over several times with four of us crowded together in the front seat. Except for some scratches and some relatively minor injury to my hip, we came away unscathed. We suffered more from embarrassment over the wet tar from the highway on our Sunday clothes than anything else.

Several years later I was involved in a collision when a young woman in an obvious hurry passed the car in front of her and hit us head on, sending pieces of her husband's new red Corvette all over someone's lawn and propelling my head through the windshield. It could have propelled me straight to heaven, given the severity of the crash and the total destruction of both cars. I spent a few days in the hospital with a concussion and two weeks in bed recovering from the trauma. Perhaps my guardian angel could have done a better job that spring afternoon but at least I lived to tell about it and thanked God for sparing my life

Two weeks ago as John was making a left hand turn at a busy  intersection of a major highway in our area, a teenage boy came barreling through the red light. Sitting in the passenger seat of our car, I saw him coming at great speed and screamed. John quickly accelerated and the boy smashed into the back door of our car, sending us careening wildly. Through John's skillful driving, our car was kept under control until it came to a stop. Had John not accelerated, I would have been hit directly by the teenager's car coming at us at 65 mph. And I wouldn't be here to describe the accident today. There was major damage to both cars. For thirty minutes after the accident, I sat trembling and alone in a booth at a nearby Chick-Filet Restaurant while John talked to the police and the teenager was charged with the accident. Over and over I kept repeating quietly, "Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord"

How many times a day are we protected by our guardian angels without our ever knowing it? How many accidents do we narrowly avoid, how many close calls do we make, never realizing how close we come to disaster or death?

I believe the dates of our births and the dates of our deaths are stamped with timeless lasers on the palm of God's hand. Nothing we do or say can change those important dates. As Christian writer and mystic, Dr. A.W. Tozer so eloquently wrote:

"The man of true faith may live in absolute assurance that his steps are ordered by the Lord. For him misfortune is outside the bounds of possibility. He cannot be torn from this earth one hour ahead of the time God has appointed, and he cannot be detained on earth one moment after God is done with him here. He is not a waif of the wide world, a foundling of time and space, but a saint of the Lord and the darling of His particular care."

Our times are indeed in God's hands.