Scripture Reading:
PSALM 23
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles…
2 CORINTHIANS 1:3–4
FROM THE TIME SHE WAS LITTLE, Tina Ewing had always been close to her father. In middle school, she was chosen for an advanced-level all-star soccer team, and every weekend he would accompany her as they traveled to tournaments, cheering his encouragement. When she got involved in volleyball and basketball in her sophomore year, he was at every game.
Tina’s mother was a bank executive and kept long hours. Her father was self-employed and could work his schedule around her activities. He would take her sailing and roller-blading, and he often told her about God’s 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 to describe her best friend, Tina wrote, “My dad’s my best friend. He understands me better than anyone else.”
Tina was eighteen when her father began to lose weight and cough. After three months, a doctor gave the family the dreaded diagnosis—lung cancer that had already 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. It’s part of his plan, for whatever reason.”
Two weeks later he died. It wasn’t until after his funeral service that she broke down and wept. Her mother 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 didn’t go to school. Calls to her mother didn’t help. Counseling sessions did nothing. She lost weight and dark circles appeared beneath her once-bright eyes.
Tina knew she needed a divine intervention, God’s miraculous power, but how could she begin a conversation with God when he was the very one who had let her father die? She hated that thought, but it didn’t go away. And as the months passed, she could not escape or explain the emptiness inside her. She barely graduated from high school and spent the summer in depression.
In the fall, sometime near the anniversary of her father’s death, Tina and her friends Diane and Lora decided to hike along a lake that had been one of her father’s favorites. Her friends said it was time to do it, but she dreaded the memories. God, give me the strength.
For nearly thirty minutes the three friends walked in silence, each lost in her own thoughts. One after another the memories of her father bombarded Tina with an almost physical force. They kept walking, and Tina could practically hear her father’s voice as they approached the steepest hill. There, at the top, was a bench where Tina and her father had often sat and talked.
Refusing to give in to her overwhelming feelings of grief, Tina looked up and saw a tall man in jeans and a T-shirt standing at the top of the hill looking out at the lake. He looked exactly like her father. She gasped, but her friends didn’t seem to notice. Tina stared at 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 her father.
Tina’s friends still seemed oblivious to the man and walked past without stopping. She paused and stared into his eyes. He winked once, smiled again, and then slowly turned back toward the lake.
She seemed to know, instinctively, that there was no need to question the man or engage in dialogue. A peaceful remembrance washed over her, and after months of grieving, she felt at peace with herself.
At the bottom of the hill, she asked her friends to stop. “Did you see that man at the top of the hill?”
“What man?” Diane’s expression was blank.
“Yeah, who?” Lora asked. “We’ve been the only ones on the trail all day.”
“No, seriously. Back there on the hill. The guy in the jeans. He looked just like my—” Tina stopped short. Her friends would think she was crazy if she explained it. Besides, if they hadn’t seen anyone, then… Tina felt another wave of peace. “Never mind,” she said. “Must’ve been my imagination.”
Tina kept the incident to herself. 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 her.
This notion was confirmed five years later when Tina was working in Los Angeles near the Federal Building. Pausing at a curb, waiting for the light to change, she suddenly felt a firm hand on her shoulder that 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 she had been standing. If she had remained standing there, she’d have been killed.
Tina 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.”
Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
ISAIAH 41:10