It was Sabbath afternoon in Kenya, East Africa. We had been to Sabbath School and the worship service. Now it was a bright sunny afternoon. We drove to Thika Falls.
We found a delightful place down where the Thika River flows over the rocks. It has just plunged over a cliff. That’s why it’s called Thika Falls. The roar of the waterfall is so loud you have to shout to be heard.
The boys, Bob and John, were old enough to go off walking ahead along the trail up the river, while Grace and Margie and I stayed behind (Margie was about four). We just wanted to rest awhile and read a good book. There was no one else anywhere around. We were all alone in this beautiful place.
Grace and I were sitting on top of a huge rock that jutted out into the river, each reading a book. Margie was happy to wade in the water next to our big rock.
All went well until above the noise of the waterfall, Grace suddenly cried out, “Where’s Margie?”
We looked around; she was nowhere to be seen. I jumped down and ran a bit up the river looking for her, thinking maybe while we were reading she could have wandered off. Nowhere to be seen.
Grace also jumped down off the big rock we were sitting on. To this day she doesn’t know why she did it, but there at the foot of that big rock as it jutted out into the river, Grace put her hand down into that dark water, and guess what she felt?
There was Margie’s hand, reaching out above her head, waving her hand in the water. She had suddenly slid down into what was a big hole that we didn’t know was there, deeper than she was tall, so that her waving hand was just a few inches below the top of the water. You couldn’t see it. Grace pulled her up.
She hadn’t taken a breath yet, for the water was icy cold. There was nothing Margie could have done to save herself, for the hole just went down steep and she couldn’t have climbed out, for there was nothing she could have held on to.
Grace says that she heard no voice of an angel telling her to look up and see that Margie wasn’t there anymore. The noise of the waterfall was so loud that we couldn’t have heard anything. The two of us could have just kept on reading our books, knowing nothing until little Margie could have drowned down in that icy water.
Did an angel say something to Grace? Grace says she didn’t hear anything; but some angel must have prompted her to think—“Where’s Margie?” just in time.
The Lord does not love us any better than He loves anybody else. That’s for sure. He loves us all alike. But we had done something that, sad to say, many families don’t do: we had had “family worship” that morning. Family worship is when daddy, mother, and the children spend a little time together reading a story from the Bible, and then getting on their knees to pray. They thank our Heavenly Father for His blessings, and ask Him to send an angel to guard us as we enter our new day. “His angel guards those who have reverence for the Lord and rescues them from danger” (Psalm 34:7).
Yes, it was an angel who somehow in a way only he knows gave to Grace that sudden realization: “Where’s Margie?” She wasn’t where we had left her! Thank You, Father, for sending us an angel!
And it was to my wife that the angel was able to send that strange message—not to me. That makes me humble even to think about it.