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“This light is entrusted to you to be kept burning brightly . . .” so
said the priest the day he handed the baptismal candle to the parents.

These particular parents were the kind who took that admonition to
heart. They were there for that child. It was evident in his demeanor and his
caring about others. His friends would say not that he was given a
light, but that he was that light.

Then one Saturday night, the unthinkable. Five days shy of his
sixteenth birthday, on a lonely stretch of country road, he and three friends
drove headlong into the place where the margin of error is zero.

The pickup flipped once, then twice, and when it finally came to rest,
the candle was no more. In overflowing tears a community grieved, for this
child was a likeable child, this child was one of those “low maintenance”
ones—the kind that are just fun to be around, this child was truly a light to
his family and to his peers. And now his light would burn no more.

Like most kids his age, his life had held so much promise. He was going
to play second base next year for the baseball team. He was going to get a
car for his birthday. He was going to go back to a wedding dance that night
and party with his myriad of friends. But in one heart-wrenching instant
the flame of his life, of his potential, was snuffed out leaving in its
absence only grief, pain, and emptiness.

On the way to the wake service my dad heard the “inspirational story”
of a family of five who had all survived a harrowing van rollover with nary
a scratch. The radio announcer said, “They were lucky to have their
guardian angels in that van that day.” Now most of the time, he would have said,
“Yeah, they were.” Instead my dad, the baseball coach, who had just
watched his future second baseman lift up from second base in a Lifestar
helicopter only to return in a coffin, said, “I just kept thinking where were the
angels that night? Where were this child’s angels?”

That question stuck in my mind. As that pickup flipped once, bounced
into the air, and dislodged him from his seat—where were the angels at that
moment? When the pickup again sailed through the air on its second pass
over—why did the angels hang back? Why didn’t they rush in to hold this
boy, this light, inside the cab? Why did they allow him to be thrown so that
his bright, shining candle would be forever extinguished? Why?

There are theories of course. “It was just his time.” “It was God’s
will.” But do we really think it’s God’s will for his children to suffer? And
why does He send angels some times and not others? Why was this candle
quenched, when other dimmer candles burn on and on—causing heartache and
destruction everywhere they go? It just didn’t make sense.

Until the funeral. The same priest who had first presented that light
to the parents those few short years before stood before us again with this
explanation. “God allowed his own son to be tried, wrongly convicted,
sentenced to death, hung on a cross, and crucified. He could’ve saved
Him, but if He had, the suffering of this world would still extend to the
next. At times like this we don’t understand why, but we have to understand
that ‘why’ backward means only, ‘Your Holy Will.’”

I had never had cause to think about this scene before—the one with
Christ hanging from the cross while the angels hung by and watched. However,
later putting the two pieces together, I realized where the angels were. It
wasn’t that they weren’t there. They were simply on the other side of that
temple curtain. The one that split down the middle at the moment of Christ’s
death.

And from that side, they were waiting with open arms to receive and
comfort the light that had been sent to this earth for a short time, now
destined to return to God’s loving embrace.

Where were the angels that evening as the pickup flipped in the air?
They weren’t far—they just didn’t have the mission we would’ve liked for
them to have that day. Yes, bad things happen, and we don’t always understand.
However, our mission is not to understand—our mission is to believe
that in God’s plan, not in ours, the angels are always exactly where they are
supposed to be.


Copyright 2002 by Staci Stallings