I Saw An Angel At Work

 by: David Leonhardt

Sometimes you have to see something to believe it. Like angels. Unfortunately, angels are adept at not being seen, yet many people believe in them.

I saw an angel at work last year. No, I did not see the halo. Or the feathered wings. Or a flowing white gown dancing in the wind. But there was no mistaking the unique handiwork.

When Little Lady was just one-and-a-half years old, we were visiting friends in another town. Sunday morning, we accompanied them to their church, which is surrounded by a great semi-circle hallway. You cannot enter the church itself except through one of the four or five doorways from the hallway.

We entered the building, heading right down the hallway straight for the nursery to leave our Little Lady with strangers for the first time ever. Note that we had not yet entered the actual church. The caretaker handed us a number and told us that if our child got too restless, we would see that number projected on the screen at the front of the church.

We headed into the church through a door at the far side. We sat down in a pew, anticipating to see the number within five minutes.

The number never showed up. After an hour, I snuck up to the door of the toddler area and saw her gleefully running around. That in itself might qualify as the work of angels, but the real miracle was yet to come.

At the end of the service, we went to retrieve Little Lady. As we led her out of the toddler area, SHE took over and started pulling my wife by the hand.

She lead my wife down the hallway with great determination, dragging her through the throng of almost 1000 people milling about in the hallway, all the way to the far side of the church where we had entered before to reach our pew. This was no small feat, and it took ten minutes to get through the crowd, but she was persistent.

When we had fought our way two-thirds around the church, she pulled my wife into the church from the hallway through the very door we had entered earlier – after we had left her off at the nursery.

I stood in amazement as I watched her go several pews down and turn right into the very pew where we had been seated. She had never seen us go there. She had never been inside the church before. How did she know?

OK, so this was not the parting of the Red Sea and nobody's life was saved. But could it be anything other than the work of angels?