Are There Guardian Angels?

As I was standing in line at the grocery store Friday awaiting my turn, I noticed the latest issue of Reader's Digest in the magazine rack. The RD makes good bedtime reading for me. The short stories and articles are just the thing for me to read until I'm drowsy and ready to turn in for real.

I couldn't help noticing an item in the section Your True Stories in 100 Words. It was submitted by Grace Napier of Greeley, Colorado, who feels she has a guardian angel watching over.

Guardian angels is a subject I once ridiculed. That was due to my then rigid literalist mindset, as well an ignorance of the imaginal realm. Now I'm more inclined to listen to those who have stories to tell.

Grace Napier relates that she was on her way to work and exiting her yard when "a firm hand restrained my right shoulder, shoving me left." This took her on a longer route "where traffic was not moving."

That sounds bad, but Grace later learned that there had been a fatal traffic accident along the route she had originally planned to take. "I would have been that accident," she writes, crediting her guardian angel with saving her life.

I would assume Napier is a Christian and that worldview is what gives form to her story.

If my credulity is longer strained by such stories, it is because I have given serious consideration to the times in my own life when I sensed a guiding force. I think also of the warnings unheeded that I lived to regret.