Walk with Him: Angels are Near

“Why is this happening?” This was my desperate cry, sitting outside on a hospital bench far from home, alone and exhausted. My mother, with a feeding tube and a pain pump, was lying inside. She had been tending my small nephews while their parents were away on a cruise when she was carried away by an ambulance with a serious bowel blockage. It had been five days of two surgeries, no sleep, no relief. It was one of the lowest, darkest moments in my life.

Shortly later, back in the room, I looked up with wonder to see a dear friend from Salt Lake walking in the door–carrying a six-pack of Diet Coke! She announced she had a car and a hotel room where I was going to sleep and rest, succored with a good meal and of course, my life-saving liquid. Debbie had flown to Spokane for a rescue mission, and she did just that. It is one of the sweetest acts of kindness I’ve ever received in my life.

“…he (Elijah) sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life…. And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat. And he looked, and, behold there was a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse of water at his head. And he did eat and drink, and laid him down again. And the angel of the Lord came again the second time and touched him, and said, Arise and eat; because the journey is too great for thee. And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights…” (1 Kings 19: 4-8).

“My beloved brothers and sisters, I testify of angels, both the heavenly and the mortal kind. In doing so I am testifying that God never leaves us alone, never leaves us unaided in the challenges that we face. ‘[N]or will he, so long as time shall last, or the earth shall stand, or there shall be one man [or woman or child] upon the face thereof to be saved.’ On occasions, global or personal, we may feel we are distanced from God, shut out from heaven, lost, alone in dark and dreary places. Often enough that distress can be of our own making, but even then the Father of us all is watching and assisting. And always there are those angels who come and go all around us, seen and unseen, known and unknown, mortal and immortal.” (Elder Jeffrey R. Holland)

“I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your [heart], and mine angels round about you, to bear you up.” (D&C 84:88)