II l always fear that creation will expire before teatime.  ~Sydney Smith

While meandering through my local bookstore, a favorite haunt on especially stressful days, I unexpectedly found a copy of my first published book. The book is now out of print so I was delighted to find it on the shelf instead of in the bargain bin!

The title, Angels in High Top Sneakers, seems to catch the imagination of many who believe in angels—messengers of God who often appear in the most unexpected ways and with the uncanny knack of arriving just in the knick of time. After hearing a number of stories recounting this wonderful trait, I considered the sequel to my first book might be titled, Angels in Eighteen Wheelers.

The idea came when I was driving home from Albany on the New York State Thruway. I noticed a car abandoned on the side of the road. It was pretty well mangled—obviously the result of a terrible accident. It reminded me of a similar accident several years ago involving one of my sons who fell asleep at the wheel, ran off the highway and hit an abandoned car, flipping the station wagon he was driving several times before it landed horizontally across Route 287. In addition to everything else, the engine caught fire.

Fortunately, a trucker driving in the opposite direction saw the accident and turned around just in time to put out the flames with a fire extinguisher he kept in the cab of his truck. How different things might have been if that amazing man hadn’t appeared just when he did!

Similarly, my friend’s son was driving home alone from Pennsylvania very late one evening when he had two blowouts. Stuck on a windy mountain road, he quickly realized the precarious position of his car, and was certain he was stranded for the night. But just minutes later, bright lights pulled up behind him and a trucker jumped out of the cab of his eighteen-wheeler. I can’t imagine a more welcomed sight—surely, an angel in the eyes of this young man.

One of the most powerful examples of angels ministering in the knick of time is found in the story of Abraham who desired to be obedient to God by sacrificing his son, Isaac. Scripture relays, "When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son." But then, not a moment too late, an angel of the Lord called to Abraham, saying, "Abraham! Abraham… Do not lay a hand on the boy…Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son."

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, friend and co-worker of Dr. Martin Luther King, once shared a story about a child’s reaction to that Scripture reading, saying that the child began to sob with pity for Isaac.

"Why are you crying?" his rabbi asked. "You know that Isaac was not killed."

The child questioned the rabbi saying, "Suppose the angel had come a second too late?" The rabbi comforted the young boy saying that an angel cannot come late.

But years later Heschel, who may have been the child in the story, reflected that while an angel cannot be late, a flesh and blood human being can be.

When I consider Rabbi Heschel’s commentary and look back at my life, I see there were many times when I was too late—with kindness, with charity, with listening, with forgiveness, with love. Sometimes I was late with the giving, and sometimes with the receiving. In either case, inevitably I, or someone for whom I cared, suffered needlessly—all because I couldn’t keep time with the angels.

Lessons in lateness are inevitably painful, and always valuable, if we choose to learn from them, and the most valuable thing we can learn is to live in the "now;" to give all we can and receive all that is offered in this present moment.

There may be no others.

One more thing I learned from my son’s accident—when some part of our lives is in flames, it’s foolish to refuse help from the person, or angel, who brings the fire extinguisher.

Copyright © 2004 Mary Regina Morrell