“Where Angels Walk” by Joan Wester Anderson

There is a story told by a pediatric nurse serving in Danzig in 1945, after Russian troops had overrun many German towns.  Local women were being abused, and nights were filled with terror.  Nurses gathered as many women and children as they could, and found temporary lodging in a small makeshift school.  The nurses often worked at night and, because of the lack of electricity, used candle stubs.  Since theirs was the only lighted building, they too faced the danger of being invaded by the Russians.  Yet the people called this building the “island of peace”, because despite the surroundings, nothing bad ever seemed to happen there. Gradually the stream of those seeking shelter increased.

One day a woman brought her children and begged the nurses to take them.  The children had had a completely secular upbringing and had never heard of prayer.  That evening, as the community held a worship service, instead of folding his hands with the rest, the new boy stared into the distance with wide eyes.  At the end, the community sang a familiar song, asking God to send angels to 'place golden weapons around our beds.'

"When we said Amen, the boy came up to me and drew me out of the building," the nurse reported.  "He kept tapping his breastbone and saying, 'Up to here.  It came up to here on them'."

The nurse asked him what he meant.  Pointing up to the gutter on the roof of the building, he repeated his statement:  "The gutter came up to here on them."  "What are you talking about?" the nurse asked.

The boy told her that while everyone had been singing, he had seen a man ablaze with lights at every corner of the building.  The men were so tall that they towered above the roof, their arms outstretched over everyone in the little structure.

"Now it was clear to me," the nurse noted. "We had not seen them, but they certainly were watching us.  This house could be called 'the island of peace' because angels guarded it all."

…..Copyright 2011

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