Angels and flying grills

My husband and I and our two young grandchildren were headed to a relative’s home in the country to set up a large gas grill as a special gift from the family. My husband and son had packed the 100-pound grill into the bed of our pickup truck. But something went awry about an hour into our drive, and the grill flew out of the back of the pickup, smashed onto the pavement, and slid across two lanes of traffic, before coming to rest on the divided highway.

We pulled over to the side of the road, and my husband jumped out to see if he could retrieve the grill before it would cause any damage or injury to others. I stayed in the truck with our grandchildren and began praying to know that God was in control of the situation. It wasn’t easy, as hundreds of holiday travelers were on the road, and it seemed nearly impossible to clear the hazard. I realized that if there ever was a moment when we needed an angel, this was it.

We all have times when we yearn for a thought from God – or some sign that there is a power beyond what the physical senses perceive, assuring us that all is well. That’s what angels do. Rather than being feathery, winged super-humans, the angels we need are the divine thoughts from God that guide us and bring hope and healing.

This definition of angels in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy, who founded this news organization, has helped me to understand more clearly what angels are: “God’s thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect; the inspiration of goodness, purity, and immortality, counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality” (p. 581). Angels, then, have the power to counteract whatever seems evil in our experience.

The Bible tells us, “He [God] shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways” (Psalms 91:11). These angels – or spiritual messages – come to our thinking, changing our thoughts about a situation, and enable us to feel the reality of the all-power and all-presence of God right in a moment where trouble seems inevitable. They lift our thinking up from a material view and reveal to us God’s goodness in terms we can understand.

That’s what happened to us on that busy highway. Holding on to the angel message that God was in control, I noticed a pickup truck with monster tires turn around and head back along the grassy shoulder to where my husband was standing. The driver got out to help. Then, as if perfectly orchestrated, the traffic came to a halt, allowing the driver and my husband to fetch the grill and pull it safely off the road. The man helped us load the grill back onto our pickup and even gave us extra webbing to secure it, and we firmly tied everything down.

Christ Jesus spoke of there being “legions of angels” (Matthew 26:53). We certainly saw very practical evidence of angels – those protecting thoughts from God – that day. They had guided drivers so no one was harmed, and they had inspired the man in the truck with monster tires to be in the right place at the right time to render aid. So complete was God’s protection that even the grill survived. After replacing a couple of parts, the family has put it to good use for cookouts.

We are never without the help of angels, because they are found right within our consciousness. They come to us as we acknowledge the presence of God, divine intelligence, and we see clearly that something beyond what the material senses perceive is going on. The spiritual ideas we need will show us, in powerful and practical ways, that God is indeed in control – just as they stopped a flying grill from causing any harm and guided everyone to safety.