It was still the mid part of November; but from the look of the mall parking lot, you would have sworn that Christmas was just a day or two away. Despite the blustery wind and snow, we had no choice but to park far out in the parking lot and hurry inside out of the cold.

As my wife and I waited on foot to cross a line of car traffic, one car in particular stood out in my mind: It was an older sedan in a navy blue colour. Its lone occupant, the driver, had stopped the vehicle, successfully stopping the line of traffic and making a way for us to cross. She was middle-aged, she wore her long brown hair down around her face, and she was waving her hand at us.

That was all I had time to notice, for my wife was pulling me by the arm to cross the road. It was, after all, perhaps the only chance we would get for a while, and I dutifully shifted my eyes to the route and followed my wife to the far curb. Just a few more steps and we would be inside where it was … warm!

This was our single-minded destination, and we were both startled to hear someone yelling behind us. Turning around, we noticed the same blue car; only this time it was headed in the opposite direction, and it was right in front of the mall entrance. How that car could have turned around so quickly with so much traffic, we will never know.

We didn’t really think about this, however. Rather, my wife was moving closer to the car, trying to understand the woman’s words: “You dropped something back there! It was a phone or a wallet or something!”

A look of pure horror washed over my wife’s face as she felt the pocket of her jeans where her little credit card wallet was supposed to be. She then shifted her hands to her other pocket, the one where her cell phone was supposed to be, and I could tell by the look of relief that came over her that both items were where they were supposed to be.

So if she hadn’t dropped her wallet or her phone, what had the nice lady in the navy blue car seen?

We decided to retrace our steps, and we waded our way carefully back across that stream of traffic and began making our way through the parked cars in the general direction of where we had left our vehicle. There was absolutely nothing on the parking lot, however. “Do you see anything?” asked my wife. I shook my head. “And I don’t know what we could have dropped,” my wife continued. “I have both the phone and my credit card wallet right here!” she patted the two pockets of her jeans. “Maybe it was a piece of paper or something!”

We both knew, however, that a piece of paper wouldn’t likely have been enough the catch the attention of the lady. But when we had retraced half our steps and there was nothing to be seen, when we were pretty sure we had already covered the territory the woman would have seen, and when there was still nothing, our minds once again began contemplating the inviting warmth that we knew resided behind the closed mall doors…

As we turned back, however, you can imagine our surprise when the same navy blue car again stopped beside us… Wait… did this car fly or something? There’s no way it could have gotten from point “A” to point “B”, let alone our current point “C” in so little time! But there was no time to contemplate the “how did you get here” question, for the lady was again shouting the same message out her window.

I’m pretty sure the woman must have found us very rude, but we were just too perplexed to know how to answer politely. This time my wife responded: “I don’t see anything we could have dropped!”

“It’s not here!” shouted the excited woman. “You dropped it on the next row!” She paused, then sensing that we were contemplating simply returning to the mall entrance, she said, “You don’t have to look more if you don’t want to, but if it were me, I’d keep looking!”

My wife snapped out of her single-minded consternation at this point and remembered her manners. “Yes,” she nodded. “I just don’t know what we could have dropped! We have all of our things with us now! But thanks so much!”

The mysterious car that seemed to turn on a dime and drive through lines of cars turned back then, and it seemed to disappear into the traffic around it. I wondered about this as I turned to follow my wife to the next row of cars, but thoughts of the car fled my mind as I saw my wife’s face turn white with horror as she rushed forward and picked something up off the parking lot.

“It’s your phone!” she said. “It must have fallen off your belt!”

Both of us were silent for a few moments, contemplating what could have happened. You see, my phone is a special phone set up for people like myself who struggle with cognition. It had cost a pretty penny, and it had been my birthday gift from the entire family. It had been laying right in the middle of the lane. It was a miracle it hadn’t been run over. But perhaps the bigger miracle was that a total stranger had seen it fall when we had no idea it was missing, and that total stranger cared enough to flag us down – not once, not twice, but THREE times!

And now that stranger and her navy blue sedan were … gone!

Had we just seen an angel?

Whether a real angel from Heaven or simply a kind soul, God had used this person to avert disaster. She will forever be an angel in our books, the angel that saved our Christmas shopping that day!

God loves you. He does everything to take care of you. He even sends His angels to protect you from problems you aren’t even aware that you carried! “For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways…” (Ps. 91:11 NIV)

If God loves us that much, to protect us from problems we don’t even know we’ve created, isn’t He worthy of our surrender? Shouldn’t we trust Him with everything in our beings?

In His love,
Rob Chaffart
Director, Answers2Prayer Ministries