Suddenly, Kody knew there was one other way to check on the man’s identity. The county sheriff’s department ran the rescue station. Kody hurried home and placed a call to that office.
“No one’s had access to the rescue station since it was closed down in the fall. It’s been completely vacant.”
Kody hung up, his hands trembling. Maybe someone at the university would know what was going on. He placed another call and asked if anyone had been given permission to do research at the building.
“No.” The voice sounded bored on the other end. “The county doesn’t allow research at the rescue station during the off season.”
Kody hung up the phone and fell to his knees, weak with the realization. Then he remembered the reason he’d gone on the hike in the first place—to search for direction. When it looked as though the storm might kill him, he’d begged God for direction again—a different kind of direction.
A hint of understanding washed over Kody.
“Could it have been?” Chills poked at his spine. “Is it possible?”
In that moment he realized it must have been and that yes, it was possible. God had worked out a miracle to save his life. And if God wanted his life saved, it must be so that he himself could go on to save the lives of others.
And that meant going to college to study medicine. Just like he used to dream of doing when he was younger.
Today Kody is at medical school, well on his way to becoming a doctor. And though he can’t prove it, he’s convinced that the man who saved his life that terrible winter day was none other than an angel. An angel sent to show him the way home … and the way to a future that God had planned for him all along.
Missing Daddy
Tina Ewing had always been close to her father. When she was a little girl growing up in Boston, Paul Ewing would come home from work and spend hours pretending to be the horse while Tina bounced on his back.
As Tina moved into middle school, the two continued to share a special bond. Tina became a talented soccer player and was chosen for an advanced-level all-star team. The girls played in tournaments across the state and every weekend Tina’s father would accompany her, cheering words of encouragement to Tina as she played her heart out.
When Tina made the decision to give up soccer during her sophomore year, it was her father who was most supportive. “You’ve done your best, sweetheart.” He kissed the top of her head. “Maybe it’s time to try something else.”
Tina’s mother was an executive at a local bank and she kept long hours. Her father was self-employed and could work his schedule around Tina’s activities. When she got involved in volleyball and basketball that year, he was at every game. When Tina’s mother worked weekends, Tina and her father would go sailing or roller-blading. Those were the afternoons when Tina’s father would tell her that God had plans for her life—great plans.
“Never doubt for a minute how much God loves you.” He’d grin at her. “Get that part right and everything in life will fall into place.”
That year, during an essay contest, Tina’s teacher asked her to name and describe her best friend. “My dad’s my best friend,” she wrote. “He understands me better than anyone else.”
Tina was only eighteen when her father began losing weight and coughing. It took three months for a doctor to give the family the diagnosis they were dreading. Tina’s father had lung cancer. Worse, it had spread to his liver. Two months later he was hospitalized and called Tina to his bedside.
“Don’t blame … God for this, sweetheart.” He managed a smile, though he was breathless from the effort of talking. “God’s calling me home, but your mother and I are at peace. It’s part of his plan, for whatever reason.”
Tina held back her tears, then and when he died two weeks later. It wasn’t until after his funeral service that she broke down and wept. Her mother found her in her room and sat on the bed beside her. “He’ll always be with you, baby. Always.”
But for months, Tina couldn’t shake the dark cloud his absence had left. There were times when she’d go to school and spend the day in the library, missing every class. Calls to her mother did nothing to help.
“I can’t make myself think, Mom. I miss him so much.”
Her mother took time off from work to take Tina to counseling sessions, but nothing seemed to help. She lost weight and dark circles appeared beneath her once-bright eyes.
“Your father would be heartbroken, dear,” her mother told her one day. “I’m praying for you. And somewhere I know your father is praying, too.”
Her mother’s words rang in Tina’s head. It was true, of course. Prayer, divine intervention, God’s miraculous power was the only way she would survive. But where was she supposed to start? How did she begin a conversation with God when he was the very one who had let her father die?
They were thoughts Tina hated to have, but they were there all the same. And as the months passed, there was an emptiness inside her that she could neither escape nor explain. She barely graduated from high school and spent the summer moping about the house. Then, that fall, sometime near the anniversary of her father’s death, Tina and two of her friends, Diane and Lora, decided to hike along a lake that had been one of her father’s favorites.
“I’m not sure we should be doing this.” The hole in Tina’s heart felt bigger than the lake in front of them as she and the others got out of the car and headed toward the water. Parts of the hike would be hilly, and Tina didn’t have the energy to climb them. And what about the memories along the way? Every step of this hike would remind her of her father.
“Come on, Tina. It’s time.” Diane gently pulled Tina’s arm and led her toward the trail.
Tina closed her eyes. God … give me the strength. When she blinked them open, she felt a little more capable than before. “I know.” She inhaled slowly. “Now or never.”
The three friends headed toward the lake. For nearly thirty minutes, the threesome walked in silence, each lost in her own thoughts. They rounded a corner and Tina remembered the time she and her father had stopped in that spot when she twisted her ankle once.
“Can you make it, honey?” She could still hear her father’s voice, caring for her, encouraging he.
One after another the memories of her father bombarded her with an almost physical force. The three friends turned a corner to approach the steepest hill of the climb. The path followed the hill straight up and then leveled off along a fifty-yard plateau. At the top of the hill, a bench marked the spot where Tina and her father had often sat and talked when they visited the lake. Tina swallowed hard and stared straight ahead. She would have to take the hill by storm, facing every memory along the way and refusing to give in to her overwhelming feelings of grief.
Then suddenly she saw someone on the hill high above her.
A tall man in jeans and a T-shirt stood on the plateau staring out at the lake. From her viewpoint, the man looked exactly like her dead father. Tina gasped, but her friends didn’t seem to hear her. The trio continued up the hill. As they did, Tina kept her eyes on the man, and suddenly she felt a burden being lifted from her shoulders. When they were just ten yards from the man, he turned toward Tina and smiled the same warm and reassuring smile that had once belonged to Paul Ewing alone.
Tina’s friends still seemed oblivious to the man and continued past him without stopping. When Tina was only a few feet away from him, she paused and stared into his eyes. He winked once, smiled again, and then slowly turned back toward the lake.
Although Tina did not believe that people could come back from the dead or that people became angels after death, at that instant, she had no doubt that somehow this man was her father. She did not know how it could be possible, but there was no way anyone could look so much like him and be anyone else. She seemed to know, instinctively, that there was no need to question the man or engage in dialogue. A peaceful reassurance washed over her. She smiled at the man one last time and nodded as she continued on her
way. At the bottom of the hill, she caught up with her friends and asked them to stop a moment.
“Did you see that man?” She could feel the way her eyes were shining. Something they hadn’t done since her father had died. Finally, after months of grieving, she felt at peace with herself.
“What man?” Diane’s expression was blank.
“Yeah, who?” Lora tilted her head, her eyebrows lowered.
“You know who.” Tina cocked her head curiously. “That man, up on the top of the hill.” She pointed toward the hill, but the man had vanished. “He was up there, near the bench.”
Diane looked at Lora and shrugged. “I didn’t see anyone, did you?”
“Not a person. We’ve been the only ones on the trail all day.”
“No, seriously, guys. Back there on the hill. That guy in the jeans. He looked just like my —”
Tina stopped short. Her friends would think she was crazy if she finished her sentence. Besides, if they hadn’t seen anyone, then … Tina felt another wave of peace. There was no need to share the story of the man and her meeting with him.
“Never mind.” Tina began walking again. “must’ve been my imagination.”
Diane and Lora shrugged; Tina was thankful when they dropped the subject. Whoever the man was, he had given her a glimpse of the father she so badly missed and the reassurance that she had desperately needed. She would keep the incident to herself for a while and savor it. And regardless of what anyone else would say to doubt it, from that point on Tina was convinced that an angel, somehow cloaked in the appearance of her father, had been there. Perhaps he would always be there, watching over the daughter Paul Ewing had loved so much.
This notion was confirmed five years later when Tina was working in Los Angeles near the Federal Building. She went into town for lunch and was returning back to work when she paused at the curb, waiting for the light to change.
Suddenly, there was a firm grasp of a hand on her shoulder. The hand pulled her away from the curb with a force so strong it nearly knocked her to the ground. At the exact same instant, a city bus jumped the curb directly where Tina had been standing. If she had remained standing there, she’d have been killed.
She turned at once to thank the person who had rescued her, but there was no one within fifty feet of her. Again she felt an overwhelming sense of peace and reassurance.
“The Bible says God assigns his angels to watch over us,” Tina says now. “He did that for me when I was a teenager, devastated by my father’s death. And he does it still.”
A Face Like Jesus
The market colors began changing while Steve Getz was shopping for a cold can of Mountain Dew. Mixed up with the wrong crowd during his eighth grade year, Steve had dabbled with drugs ever since. But that summer he had just turned sixteen and promised his parents he was finished with doing drugs and hanging out with other people who did them.
But in the San Francisco neighborhood where he lived, drugs were easy to find and the shady friends hard to shake. Less than a month after his birthday he began using again and now here he was on a full-blown trip like he’d never experienced before. An hour before coming to the market, Steve had taken a mixture of illegal drugs, and now, suddenly, the walls of the market seemed to be melting, their colors running into each other.
Without a doubt Steve hated this—hated how it made him feel panicked and sweaty, hated how his heart raced, making him feel like he wouldn’t last another minute. Steve looked around desperately, trying to steady himself, aware that sweat had begun pouring from his forehead, dripping down his face, neck, and arms. Why do I do this to myself? The thought tapped at the inside of his brain until the sound became a deafening drumbeat.
“Not now,” he whispered out loud. “Please not now.”
He turned toward the produce section, but the fruit and vegetables had turned into large blob-like substances, and worse, they were coming toward him.
“Help!” he screamed. Then he began running full speed through the store, up one aisle and down the next. Finally, alerted by concerned customers, the store manager and someone who looked like a customer caught Steve and forced him to the ground. As strange as Steve was feeling he was surprised at the strength of the customer, a tall man Steve guessed to be in his late twenties.
“Hold his feet!” The customer directed the store manager toward Steve’s legs. “I’ve got his arms.”
Steve could barely make sense of any of it. His heart was fluttering within him and he couldn’t breathe right. He struggled to break free from the grasp of the two men, but he couldn’t find the strength. The hallucinations were worse than ever and he felt himself twist wildly on the floor. He had to be free! The tomatoes were going to get him, bury him alive if he didn’t find a way out.
Steve closed his eyes but when he opened them, he screamed in terror at what he saw. Horrible, dark demons were coming toward him. They had fierce expressions and fangs that dripped blood. There were small, evil demons floating near his face and laughing at him, and there were huge, monstrous demons circling him. Worse than the way they looked, the demons seemed to be emanating a sense of utter evil, a death and destruction that Steve was powerless to escape.
“Help me! Someone help me,” he shouted. “They’re trying to kill me.”
The customer, who had been holding Steve’s arms, leaned in closer to him.
“You’re going to be okay.” The man’s voice was soothing and clear. Despite Steve’s severe hallucinations, he could hear the man, and he began nodding.
“Help me!” he shouted again.
“Open your eyes, Steve.” The customer’s voice was calm, and no one else around them seemed to hear it. Steve kept his eyes closed. He could hear a crowd of people gathering around them, but he tuned them out. With all the concentration he could muster, he forced himself to listen to the man. “Come on, Steve, you can trust me.”
Steve opened his eyes slowly. As the picture became clearer, his eyes grew wide in astonishment. The demons were still there, but they were retreating. And in the center of the picture was what appeared to be the face of Jesus Christ. Steve was sure that’s who the guy looked like. After all, his parents had taken him to church when he was a kid. It was the same picture of Jesus he’d had in his Bible storybook back then. Awestruck, Steve stopped twisting and struggling and suddenly grew calm.
As he stared, the image in the center of the picture began to speak. “Do you want to be free from the demons, Steve?” the voice of the Christlike image asked. “You need to decide.”
Suddenly, Steve began to cry. The crowd, which had grown even larger, watched as the young man continued to lean over him, talking in a voice none of them could hear.
“Yes,” Steve cried softly. He thought of his parents back home and all the bad decisions he’d made. He needed to be free from the drugs. Now, before it was too late. He struggled to find his voice. “Help me get rid of the demons. Please help me!” The man in the picture smiled gently. “No more drugs, Steve. With them come the demons. It is your choice.”
“No, I can’t do it by myself!” Steve screamed. The customer stayed at his side, uttering calm words—words different from the ones uttered by the Christlike image, but somehow words that seemed to go together. Steve closed his eyes again and once more started to struggle out of the stranger’s grasp. But the man seemed to possess an inhuman strength and Steve’s efforts were futile.
“Look at me, Steve,” the gentle voice said again. “Trust me.”
Slowly, Steve opened his eyes again. This time the demons were gone completely. Only the image of a very pure and radiant Christ filled the center of his vision.
“Help me.” Steve’s voice was weak now, and tears filled his eyes. “Please.”
“Steve, you won’t have to do this by yourself. If you want to be rid of the demons, turn to me. I will always be right here to help you. Just call me and I will be with you.”
“Lord.” Steve whispered the word, not sure if he
was still hallucinating, but savoring the peace he felt all the same. Is that you, God? Are you really here, with me, talking to me?
Slowly the image began to fade. But before it disappeared altogether, he heard the voice once more. “Yes, Steve. It is I. I will be here for you.”
Suddenly Steve felt extremely tired. He closed his eyes and his body went limp.
The customer who had been talking quietly to Steve and holding down his arms stood up and turned to the manager. “I think you can handle it from here.” He shook the man’s hand. “The worst of it’s over.”
“Thanks.” The manager looked a little awed at the customer’s strength and ability to calm down the drugged teenager. Before he said anything more, the manager pinned down Steve’s arms in case he woke up again. When the manager looked around to ask the customer how he’d managed to calm the drugged teen, the man had vanished. At that moment, paramedics and police arrived and the manager stepped back so they could work on the boy.
“Excuse me,” a woman said as she made her way to the teenager. “I’m his mother. Please let me see him.”
Steve’s, Mom, a pretty, dark-haired woman with tears in her eyes, moved next to Steve and watched as paramedics took his vital signs. A friend of Steve’s had called and told her that he had taken a lot of drugs.
“I’m worried about him, Mrs. Getz. He went to the market, but he’s in no shape to drive.”
She had raced to the store, terrified she’d find his car crashed on the road somewhere along the way. Now she stood back some so paramedics could work on her son. “Is he … is he going to live?”
“Seems to be okay now,” one of them said. “Drug hallucination?” The paramedic directed the question to the store manager.
“Yes, definitely. Never seen anything like it.”