Sunday, November 20, 2005

ANGELS AMONG US

Hebrews 13:2 (King James Version)
2Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

Psalm 34:7 The angel of the LORD encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them.

Psalm 91:10-12 (King James Version)
10There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.
11For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.
12They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.


When I was a child my family lived in an apartment on top of a building we called "The Floor Store", that was probably the name of the building. One icy morning I started down the outside stairs, which were iced over, and completely lost my balance. I was going to fall from the top of those stairs and there was no way to stop it, but then, unexplainably, I straightened up. Whether it was an angel or the power of God, I don't know, but I do know it was the intervention of God that kept me from falling down those stairs, and that was before I accepted Christ as my Saviour. I think I was more amazed that I just straightened up than I was startled that I was about to fall.

My brother tells me that once when he was angry at me about something he threw a full can of pop at me and at a certain point before reaching me he saw it stop and fall straight down. I don't remember this incident but he has no reason to tell me it happened if it didn't.

Now for my visible angel experience: Again it was a very icy day, my sister and I had an arrangement in which we shared my car to get to our jobs. It was a day when cars were getting stranded all over the place on the icy roads. She managed to get to the hospital where I worked to pick me up, and we were on our way to get her son from day care. We took a route we thought would be salted and passable but we ended up in a lane of traffic that wasn't going anywhere. My sister was almost to the point of hysteria because they would charge an extra day if she didn't pick up her son on time, which she really couldn't afford, and she didn't know what they would do with him if she was very late. I was very uncomfortable with the amount of gas we had, which was less than a quarter of a tank. We prayed, then I noticed that one lane of the traffic moving in the opposite direction was open. I don't remember if I was driving or my sister, but I decided we were going to get in that lane to get out of the stranded traffic. Wouldn't you know a police car was in that lane coming straight toward us. Now we were also probably going to get a ticket. But the police car just moved into the other lane of traffic going that direction and let us go on, we turned at the corner which was a short distance away and were in our proper lane again. We were a little late getting her son but they didn't charge her because of the circumstances. So now we had to get to a station right away and get gas. We started down a little back road that we were familiar with but it was blocked off at the end, we tried to get out of there but my car was stuck in an icy patch. I never learned how to skate and trying to walk on ice is something I dreaded. I didn't know what I was going to do except trust God to get us out of it. We were trying to dislodge the car from the ice, by rocking it, to no avail, when a well dressed man, in a very nice top coat, comes walking toward us, not slipping and sliding, but walking normally toward us from the blocked off section of the road. He asks if he can be of assistance and pushes the car out of the icy patch, then he continues on down the road. We looked back and didn't see him, we managed to back out of there and still didn't see him again. We managed to get our gas and everybody got home just fine. Was he an angel? I think so. Why would a man as well dressed and well groomed as he was be walking down an old side road on an icy day, and have no trouble at all walking on the ice? If I'm wrong, well then one day the Lord will tell me "Pam, that wasn't an angel, just a nice man I sent your way to help you out of a jam."

There were other people God sent along to help me, that may have well have been angels, like the man who wrapped a hose in my car with duct tape that got me all the way from south Texas to Oklahoma City. And many, many peoples who have spoken encouraging words "in season".

One very funny incident of God's help and protection occured when I was walking to school one morning. Several dogs surrounded me and started growling and barking at me. I was frightened, to say the least. Without thinking about or realizing what I was doing, all of a sudden I barked at them and they scattered. To this day I don't know why I barked or why they would run because of it except that God knows how to get his point across to dogs too, even if he does have to speak through people to do it.

This is a link to a site where you can look up scripture references in many different versions of the bible: http://www.biblegateway.com/.