“See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.” Matthew 18:10 NIV

This, of course, is the reference from which is drawn the concept of guardian angels for children. One could make an extended debate over when a person stops being a “little one” or what is the age limit for guardian angel assignment, but the older I get, the broader my definition of children becomes. Encouragingly, I recall that Jesus referred to a group of men who must have ranged from teenage to late twenties as children. I am not past believing that this reference to angel assignment may include all who have “become like a little child.”

Late Wednesday night my daughter called to tell me that on her way home from Illinois she had wrecked her car near the Higginsville exit about thirty miles east of Kansas City on I-70. She and Sam, her classmate and friend, were okay with a headache and swollen elbow, but the car was probably totaled.

It seems that Angela had drifted off onto the shoulder of the road and had over corrected sending the car into a spin at about seventy-five miles per hour. The vehicle went into the depression of the median ripping the front bumper loose and eventually came up onto the eastbound side of I-70 spinning perpendicular to the direction of traffic. The car continued to spin out of control and slammed backwards into the guard rail outside of the eastbound lanes finishing the destruction of the capsule.

The police officer told them that they should both have been taken away in an ambulance and joked that there was still a spot on the car that wasn’t bent.

When the vehicle came out of the median it presented first the driver’s side and then the passenger side directly to oncoming traffic on a very fast and normally well traveled interstate highway. An impact at that point would have meant almost certain death, but somehow there was little or no traffic at that time.

Twenty miles east of Higginsville a Colorado car traveling from Pennsylvania crossed the median into eastbound traffic, impacted a minivan and was split in half by a tractor trailer. The family of three were all killed and eastbound traffic was stopped for more than two hours.

The irony is not entirely lost on me. After I spoke with Angela I was immobilized for a time. I sat on the edge of the bed and sobbed uncontrollably like a broken hearted lover. My heart was filled with emotions that I could not identify and my chest ached as if two giant hands held me in a crushing grip. God watches over us and the ones we love. Why one and not another? What about that baby? Life is very uncertain. I don’t want to outlive any of my children. Where would any of us be without that unseen hand that turns events one way or another in our lives? How then shall we live?

Please join me in a prayer of thanks and praise to our gracious Savior. And pray that He will stop Angela from driving again until after her father is gone, because he loves her more than life itself.

God is good and I do thank Him for the gift not only of His love, but for the angels that “ever behold His face” caring specifically for each of His own children. His own children …