Our van gets cranky in bad weather. There's a leak somewhere, it seems, and when we get a lot of precipitation we get weird electrical problems. The headlights stay on when you switch them off. The dashboard warning lights flicker on and off randomly. The van thinks the sliding doors are open even when they're not. All of this nonsense drains the battery, and then we go out to start the van up and it's dead.
A couple of weeks ago we were in the path of the giant storm that drenched the Midwest. I played for 4:00 Mass, and I wasn't entirely surprised when I went out into the sleet and discovered that the van wouldn't start. It clicked at me sadly, and I switched it off and thought about my options.
Probably Elwood would not be excited about coming to give me a jump in the dark and in the sleet, I thought to myself. Probably the thing to do was to get an Uber home and then sort out the van in the morning. I was in the middle of explaining via text when someone knocked on my window. He was holding a portable battery charger.
Of all the parking spaces in the giant lot, he had chosen the one next to me. Of all the times he could have left the church, he arrived at his vehicle just as I was trying to start mine. Of all the things he could have kept in his trunk, he had a portable battery charger. And when he heard that woeful click-click-click, he said to himself, "Even though it's dark and sleeting and I don't know that woman, I'm going to help her out."
"For a minute I wondered if you were an ANGEL of the LORD," I told him earnestly as I listened to the happy hum of my engine.
That night I was finishing the rosary in bed, thinking through the list of all the people I include in my daily prayers. WAS I FORGETTING ANYONE? WHAT IF I FORGOT SOMEONE? An image popped into my head: the man's face above the charger, seen dimly through the window. And I thought about how I am surrounded by that great cloud of witnesses. I thought about the angelic protection and the saintly intercession that shield and enfold me whether or not I can see them, whether it is a calm and trusting kind of day or a white-knuckle clenchy-teeth kind of day. I am hemmed in behind and before, I thought. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.
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