“He will put his angels in charge of you, to guard you in all your ways.” Psalm 91:11
I first learned about guardian angels from a doctor when I was four years old. I was playing with my sister half way up the staircase at home when I tripped, tumbled down the stairs, and smashed head first through a window at the bottom. Mom rushed me to the doctor’s office with me holding a towel to my bleeding face.
“Your guardian angel was sure watching over you!” he exclaimed as he used tweezers to pluck shards of glass from around my left eye. He was peering through one of those weird looking devices doctors used to wear on their head that looked like the bottom of an aluminum pie pan with a hole the size of a pea in the middle.
He flipped it up so I could see his face. He looked even weirder now. “Yep. It’s amazing you didn’t lose your eye.” I wasn’t so much impressed with the fact that my guardian angel had just saved my dual vision as I was by that fascinating pie pan with the pea hole in it that was now sticking straight up over his head.
Ever since then I’ve kept my guardian angel pretty busy. And I have to say, he’s done an excellent job. But there have been a few instances when it seemed like he took the day off. Like the time a wasp stung me in my armpit while I was driving a cement truck. Or when I cut my right knee with a chain saw. And then last year I fell into a window well and broke my thumb while mowing my lawn.
Or maybe he wasn’t taking the day off at all. Maybe he was just minimizing the damage from my stupidity. I didn’t hit anyone when, instead of pulling over and getting that nasty wasp out of my shirt, I continued driving the cement truck while swatting at myself and consequently swerved it into oncoming traffic. The chain saw cut required only a few stitches. And the fall into the window well could have been a lot worse. (Who falls into a window well and breaks a thumb while mowing his lawn anyway?)
And then there’s the air compressor that fractured my right elbow this week. It’s on wheels and I stored it on the third shelf in our storage unit, where it strategically rolled off when I was under it. The air compressor could have fallen on my head, but instead it fell and hit my right arm. The odd thing about it is that while my arm looks terrible, all black and blue and swollen, with a bone chip floating around at the tip of my elbow, it doesn’t hurt at all. It’s fully functional.
Apparently, my guardian angel doesn’t do stupid. He just minimizes its impact.
Literally.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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