Protect Me on My Way

“Please don’t panic, ma’am, but your son was hit by a car on the way to school.”

The young woman’s words fell on my ears with the intensity of a bomb. Without stopping to think, I threw down the phone, snatched my sleeping little girl, and ran toward the school. I wept and prayed.

Within minutes I was at the school. There was five-year-old Abraham, sitting in his classroom, looking completely healthy, and telling me that he had been hit by a car. I looked him over, and although I could see no apparent harm from the accident, we took him to the hospital.

When we got to the emergency room, we saw a man with his head down, sobbing. Someone must have pointed me out to him, because while the doctors examined my son, the distraught man nervously approached me and said, “I am the one responsible for hitting your son. I will take care of the expenses for anything that has to be done.”

The man began to tell me exactly what had happened. He had driven through an intersection with a traffic light that was out of order and didn’t see the boy crossing the street in front of the stopped bus. He noticed the child only after striking him with the car. He said the impact felt as if he had hit a brick wall. The collision destroyed his car and caused injury to his passengers. He told me he had shut his eyes and thought about the little child lying on the street.

In his despair at reliving the experience, the man did not even notice that my son was now running and jumping through the halls. Suddenly, he stopped his story, and his eyes began to follow the leaps and jumps of Abraham. He cried, “It’s him. It’s him! It’s a miracle!” He looked at me and said, “I don’t believe in God, but I’m going to tell you something. I hit something very hard and strong. If you believe in anything, be thankful, because a host of angels protected your little boy today.”

That was when I remembered the prayer Abraham had offered that morning. He had a habit of saying very long prayers, which included gratitude for everything from our distant relatives to the dishes on the table. But on this particular day he had been very brief and had said only, “Heavenly Father, protect me on my way to school.”

We later went to the site of the accident, and I saw with my own eyes the magnitude of the damage to the man’s car. A wheel was out of place, a door was dented in, and the bumper was destroyed. But my little Abraham had just a scratch on his elbow. Although I know all prayers are not answered so quickly or so dramatically, Abraham is a living witness of the love and power of God.