STORIES OF GOD: Angels All Around Us, by Joan Wester Anderson

From The Power of Miracles

Angels descending, bringing from above,
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love. (anonymous)

Several summers ago, while living in Mobile, Alabama, Rhonda and her husband, John, carefully tucked their two-year-old daughter, Kellie, into bed each night, then conscientiously checked her again before they went to sleep.  Kellie had developed a habit of dragging a tiny red rocking chair around with her, which both John and Rhonda would often trip over.  “No,” Rhonda would laugh, “you can’t take the chair to bed with you!”  But they would put it as close to Kellie’s bed as they could.

One night they followed the usual routine and were awakened hours later by the insistent ringing of the doorbell.  John bolted out of bed.  “Who could that be?” he muttered, glancing at the clock.  It was almost 2:00 a.m.

Rhonda, curious and concerned, followed John to the front door, watching as he flung it open.  A young man in cutoff jeans and a white t-shirt stood there, a bike propped up behind him.  In his arms was their pajama-clad daughter, Kellie!  Incredibly, she was holding her favorite doll and her little red rocking chair.

It couldn’t be!  Kellie had been sleeping soundly the last time they checked.  How had she ended up outside, in the middle of the night, with this stranger?  “I think I must have freaked out for a moment,” Rhonda recalls.  “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”

John was equally shocked.  “Where did you get her?” he asked, grabbing his daughter out of the young man’s arms.

“I found her walking down Main Street, carrying her doll and that little red rocker,” the stranger said calmly.

Rhonda gasped.  Main Street was almost two miles from their subdivision, a very busy and dangerous area.  Kellie could have been hit by a car or injured or. . . .   Rhonda couldn’t bear to think about it.  She looked more closely at the young man.  He was beautiful, she realized, with curly blond hair and eyes that seemed to look right into her soul.

John wanted more details.  He turned for a moment and placed Kellie in Rhonda’s arms.  But when they turned back to question the young man, he was gone.

“Our street was long and straight, and we should have been able to see him riding down our driveway or on the street on his bike,” Rhonda says.  “But although we went outside to look, we saw nothing at all.”  During those few distracted seconds, the stranger had vanished.  Rhonda and John spent the rest of the night giving thanks to God for bringing their daughter safely home to them.

It was only later that another question occurred to them.  Kellie didn’t speak very distinctly at that age and certainly didn’t know her address or telephone number.  How had the young man known where to bring her?

“This ten- or fifteen-second encounter left its mark on our family,” Rhonda says today.  “I know that angels are real.”