Angel At Work?
For He will give His angels [especial] charge over you, to accompany and defend and preserve you in all your ways (of obedient service).
Psalm 91:11 AB
The British express train raced through the night, its powerful headlight piercing the darkness. Queen Victoria was a passenger on the train.
Suddenly the engineer saw a startling sight. Revealed in the beam of the engine’s light was a strange figure in a black cloak standing in the middle of the tracks and waving its arms. The engineer grabbed for the brake and brought the train to a grinding halt.
He and his fellow trainmen clambered down to see what had stopped them. But they could find no trace of the strange figure. On a hunch the engineer walked a few yards further up the tracks. Suddenly he stopped and stared into the fog in horror. A bridge had been washed out in the middle and ahead of them it had toppled into a swollen stream. If the engineer had not heeded the ghostly figure, his train would have plummeted down into the stream.
While the bridge and the tracks were being repaired, the crew made a more intensive search for the strange flagman. But not until they got to London did they solve the mystery.
At the base of the engine’s head lamp the engineer discovered a huge dead moth. He looked at it a moment, then on impulse wet its wings and pasted it to the glass of the lamp.
Climbing back into his cab, he switched on the light and saw the “flagman” in the beam, seconds before the train was due to reach the washed-out bridge. In the fog, it appeared to be a phantom figure, waving its arms.
When Queen Victoria was told of the strange happening she said, “I’m sure it was no accident. It was God’s way of protecting us.”
No, the figure the engineer saw in the headlight’s beam was not an angel . . . and yet God, quite possibly through the ministry of His unseen angels, had placed the moth on the headlight lens exactly when and where it was needed. Truly “He will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways” (Psalm 91:11 NIV).
Our Father and our God, You have so often protected me from the potential disasters of my life. You have led me through the fog of unholy thinking back to a right spirit with You. You have rescued me from the pits of my own making. Thank You, God, for sending Your angels to watch over me every day. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).