Angels and their assigned human beings

Angels and their assigned human beings.

Watching a TV program regarding angels and the pros and cons that many people get into serious discussions over, it is a good starting point to add personal glimpses to the group.  

Many times when someone falls, or is in a precarious position that a miracle is needed to save that person, we say “Wow!  Were you lucky.”  How often news reporters will do a bi-line reporting a near death or serious injury escape from.  People reading it will agree that a person's luck did not run out.  I often wonder how many view these circumstances as pure luck?  

Let me begin by enumerating several events I personally experienced and could have said the same thing; I was very lucky.  After reading these events you’ll have to say, luck was not the answer.  

As a youngster looking outside and watching the cold weather bring snow, icy-cold temperatures, and an opportunity to use a closed street to sled-ride on, some friends and I headed to this closed street along with our sleds.  To put this into perspective, this was in the mid-1940’s when snow removal and salt trucks were not a factor.  The Wilkinsburg police closed Chalfont Street and we had a free-area to sled ride all day.  As we started at the top of the street the realization of a very icy path was the street we were daring to ride down almost ¼ of a mile.  My fears began to well up as my speed was more than I expected.  A close friend was close to me and said “Quit dragging your feet” and then pushed my sled a little to get my attention.  As my trajectory was now diverted I saw a car parked (where no one was to be on the street) and I was headed right towards it.  If my head would have been raised I would have hit the bumper or wheel well.  At the speed I was going it might have been disastrous.  I hit the car very hard, rolled on the street and had a difficult time catching my breath.  Fortunately two men who were picking up ashes (In those days most people had coal-burning furnaces) ran over and carried me into a neightbor;s house.  She called the police and picked my mother up as I was rushed to the hospital.  These also were days before ambulance services were in vogue, as we have today.  The doctor in the ER examined me and the diagnosis was I had the wind knocked out of me.  Luckily, here I can use that term, my chest was like a barrel chest and was strong enough to absorb the blow.  But without my guardian angel keeping my head away from serious injury or death, I realized years later I have an angel taking care of me.

Many years later as I was going to the parking garage where I parked my car overnight, as I went down the first flight of concrete steps I was at the first landing of stairs, which was next to an open outside wall that allowed snow and the winter wind to blow across the landing.  As I turned to go down the next flight a voice said " there is ice.”  Unable to grasp the message, my feet went out from under my body like a bullet and I shot down at least 10 steps without even touching the concrete and metal steps.  As I stood up and viewed what I had gone through without ever feeling my back or head touching the near disaster I realized at this time in my life an angel was again responsible for my clearly not luck.  This was in the 1990’s and as a deacon I began to see that God had something to do as my time was not yet.

The last incident (and there were more) was on a Sunday morning as I was retrieving our Sunday newspaper, and I needed to step away from the concrete walkway of the apartment building we lived in, as I reached for the paper I lost any sense of falling.  But that is what happened.  The sequence of events was, I bent over to get the paper and the next  thing I was lying on my stomach and my remark was “I’ve fallen.”  From the area where my paper was on the grass and the final spot of somehow being moved is about four feet.  Both sides of the walkway have bricks pointing upwards as a design but treacherous if anyone would fall across them.  As I looked to where I was to where I ended up, I proved I could not have fallen across the bricks and end up in a perfect prone position with a small scrape on one knee.  There was no possible way to get from point A to point B without any injury except a scraped knee.  Once again, I knew without ever analyzing the movement that my angel actually lifted me and placed me face down without ever realizing what happened.  Three times I could have been seriously hurt or killed in a sledding accident.  I have a lot of thanks to give God and my guardian angel who is watching over me

One last example of angels I have encountered.  When my father died I was called to the hospital at 5:00 AM.  When I was let into the room I felt as though someone was in the room also.  I looked across the bed and there was my father standing next to a bearded man and smiling. I felt my father was waiting for me to come before he left.  The significance of this was the very personal look of this angel.

It was some years later that my wife and I were visiting her niece who was dying of brain cancer.  We were in her living room and immediately standing behind Lisa were two angels.  One was a woman and the man was the very same angel I saw next to my father the morning he died.  The visions were real, and it proves to me there are angels that come and go; usually invisible to us, but as in these two cases show they are caring for us and our loved ones.

Ralph B. Hathaway