Friday, June 14, 2024

Dear God,

This morning while reading a devotional book on angels, you brought to mind my own encounter with angels about 15 years ago.  While some of my friends stayed at a remote monastery on a mountain in northwest New Mexico, I lodged at a small motel about 45 minutes away.  The desert heat in June had drained me, leaving me in a precarious position so I had left the group and found a safe place to stay in the teeny town of Abiquiu.  

On the day I was to return to pick up my friends and church members, I awoke with an excruciating headache, one I knew was related to the heat and extremely high blood pressure.  Because there was no phone at the monastery and no hospital nearby, I knew I had to drive up the mountain, get my friends and drive to Santa Fe.  I prayed one of those pleading prayers because I knew I was in real trouble.  Nearly blind with pain, I returned to the monastery.  When my administrative assistant took one look at me, she was terribly frightened.  She gathered the others, helped me to the back seat of the van and began the drive back down the mountain while everyone prayed for me.

As soon as she left the monastery, I began to hear singing, not just one or two hymns but many.  Oddly, the verses being sung were just the words of encouragement, comfort and hope like verses two and three of "When Peace Like a River."  Because the car was completely quiet, I knew the singers were heavenly angels, sometimes one, other times many.  They sang to me all the way to Santa Fe, about an hour and a half away.  By the time we arrived, I could feel my blood pressure was still high but not in the dangerous levels.  They helped me into bed at the motel and I slept for 12 hours.  

All these years later I still remember the trip down the mountain and the divine voices singing healing into my body.  It's like it was just yesterday.  I don't know why you brought so many heavenly beings into my life that day but I believe they saved my life from either a stroke or death.  They changed my life, my hope and my faith forever.

Loving and Merciful God,

thank you

for the memory

of healing,

hope and love.

Thank you

for angels

who tend

to us.

Thank you

for blessing me today

with the

angels' return.

Yours, Andrea