A Treasury of Christmas Miracles (2 page)

Joe’s voice snapped Steve to attention.

“Get the aviation maps.”

Steve opened them instantly, and Joe estimated their location. According to the map, they should be directly above the airport.
Gradually, Joe began to descend through the fog toward the ground. As he did, the voice of the controller entered the cockpit.

“Pull it up! Pull it up!”

Joe responded immediately, just as both men saw a split in the fog. They were not over the airport as they had thought. Instead
they were over the lights of a busy interstate highway and had missed an overpass by no more than five feet.

Steve felt his heart thumping wildly, and he was struck by the certainty of one thing. Short of divine intervention, there
was no way they would escape their grave situation alive. The memory of “Silent Night” playing in the airport earlier that
day rewound itself in Steve’s mind. Now the words took on a terrifyingly different meaning. Without anyone to guide them down
from the skies, the silence in their cockpit that night might be the last they would ever know.

At that instant, the controller’s voice broke the silence again. “If you will listen to me, I’ll help you get down,” he said.

Joe released a pent-up sigh. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

Steve closed his eyes momentarily and prayed, begging God to guide them safely through the fog onto the ground.

Meanwhile, the controller began guiding Joe toward a landing.

“Come down a little. Okay, a little more. Not that much. All right, now over to the right. Straighten it out and come down
a little more.”

The calm, reassuring voice of the controller continued its steady stream of directions, and Joe, intent on the voice, did
as he was instructed. The trip seemed to take an eternity, and Steve wondered whether he would see his wife again. “Please,
God,” he whispered. “Get us onto the ground. Please.”

The controller continued. “Raise it a little more. Okay, you’re too far to the left. That’s right. Now lower it a little more.
All right, you’re right over the end of the runway. Set it down. Now!”

Carefully responding just as he was told, Joe lowered the plane, and when he was a few feet from the ground the runway came
into sight. As the plane touched down Steve saw Katy standing nearby waiting for him, and his eyes filled with tears of relief
and gratitude.

The two men in the cockpit looked at each other. Without saying a word, they bowed their heads and closed their eyes. “Thank
you, God,” Steve said, his voice choked with emotion. “Thank you for sparing our lives today. And thank you for listening.”

Joe picked up the plane’s radio and contacted the control tower. “Hey, I just want to thank you for what you did. We couldn’t
have made it without those directions. You probably saved our lives.”

There was a brief pause. “What are you talking about?” the controller asked. He had a different voice this time, and he was
clearly confused. “We lost all radio contact with you when we told you to return to Pierre.”

Goose bumps rose up on Steve’s arms and he watched as Joe’s face went blank in disbelief. “You what?” he asked.

“We never heard from you again and we never heard you talking to us or to anyone else,” the controller said. “We were stunned
when we saw you break through the clouds right over the runway. It was a perfect landing.”

Steve and Joe looked at each other in silent amazement. If this controller hadn’t been in contact with them through the emergency
landing, who had? Whose calm, clear voice had filled the cockpit with the directions that saved their lives?

Today Steve is aware that he still cannot specifically answer those questions. But in his heart he is certain that God did
indeed grant him a Christmas miracle that December night.

“I believe that God protected us that day and that perhaps he allowed an angel to guide us to the ground safely,” Steve says.
“It was a Christmas when Katy and I desperately needed to be together. God sustained me through that silent night and he continues
to do so every day of my life.”

A
dam Armstrong received the call just after nine on Christmas Day while on patrol with the sheriff’s department in Akron, Ohio.
A woman was weeping loudly in a corner booth at a truck stop on the highway outside of town. Several patrons had grown concerned
and contacted the sheriff’s department.

Armstrong sighed and turned his patrol car in the direction of the truck stop. As a veteran officer of eight years, he had
seen so much pain in the lives of people that he could only imagine what might cause a woman to weep aloud in a truck stop.

Especially on Christmas Day.

As he drove the remaining three miles, he remembered how the pain people suffered had been the reason he had joined the police
force in the first place. He had ridden along with a police officer one night as part of the research for a local newspaper
story he was writing. The first call of the night involved a woman who had been badly beaten by her husband. Armstrong watched
as the officer handcuffed the man and led him away; he saw the relief on the woman’s face, and suddenly something clicked.
He might write a thousand stories about good and evil in the course of a lifetime. But none of them could do for that woman
what the police officer had just done. No story could ever rescue her from her pain.

Armstrong sought police work the very next day and never once looked back. Now, eight years later, his love for his work was
as strong as it had been in the beginning. Despite the danger and frustration that came with the job, there were always nights
like that one in which he could still make a difference for someone in pain.

Not sure what he would find, Armstrong entered the truck stop café—aglow with Christmas lights—and immediately spotted the
woman, still weeping, her face covered with her hands. Nearby sat two frightened little blonde girls who seemed to be around
four and five years old.

Armstrong’s face softened as he approached the children.

“What seems to be the matter, girls?” he asked them. The older child turned to look at him, and Armstrong could see she had
tears in her eyes, too.

“Daddy couldn’t get us no Christmas presents, so he left us,” she said. “He put our stuff out of the car while we was in the
bathroom.”

Armstrong’s heart sank. He studied the woman and gently placed a hand on her shoulder. Then he looked at the girls and smiled
a warm, comforting smile. “Well, now, is that so?”

The children nodded.

“In that case I want you two to climb on those stools over there and order something to eat.”

Reluctantly the girls walked away from their mother and took separate stools along the counter. Armstrong signaled the waitress
and asked her to get the girls whatever they wanted from the menu.

With the children out of earshot, the officer sat down across from the woman. She looked up from her hands and stared sadly
at Armstrong, her eyes filled with heartbreak.

“What’s the problem?” Armstrong asked quietly.

“It’s what my girl said,” the woman replied, wiping her eyes. “My husband’s not cruel. Just at the end of his rope. We’re
flat broke, and he figured we’d get more help alone than if he stayed. I’ve been sitting here praying about what to do next,
but I don’t even have the money for a phone call. It hasn’t been a very good Christmas, sir.” Fresh tears appeared. “But right
now I just want to know God is listening, you know?”

Armstrong nodded, his eyes gentle and empathetic. And silently he added his own prayer, asking God to show him a way to help
this woman and her little children. Armstrong believed with all his heart that God had used angels to protect him in the line
of duty on more than one occasion, and he had faith he could do the same for this family.

She needs an angel about now, Lord,
he prayed silently.
Please help her out
.

Armstrong broke the silence between them. “Do you have family?”

“The nearest is in Tulsa.”

Armstrong thought a moment, then suggested several agencies that could help her. As they spoke, the waitress brought hot dogs
and French fries to the children, so the officer stood up and moved toward the counter. He took out his wallet to pay the
bill.
It’ll be my Christmas present to her,
he thought.

“The boss says no charge,” the waitress said. “We know what’s going on here.”

Armstrong smiled at the woman and nodded his thanks. Then he stooped to ask the girls how they liked their food. As he did,
a trucker stood up from his table and approached the waitress. He mumbled something to her, and then she took him by the arm
and led him to Armstrong.

It was unusual for a truck driver to approach Armstrong on his own. Typically truck drivers and police officers had something
of a natural animosity for each other. Most truck drivers tended to see the police as cutting into their earnings by writing
them tickets, while the police saw truckers as reckless people who placed their potential earnings before safety. The truth,
of course, was somewhere in the middle. But still, Armstrong couldn’t remember a time when he’d been approached by a truck
driver outside of the line of duty.

The trucker wore jeans, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap. He walked up to the counter and stood alongside Armstrong. The officer
noticed that the normal buzz of conversation and activity had stilled and the café was silent. Most of the patrons—nearly
all of them long-distance truckers—were watching the conversation between the trucker and the officer.

“Excuse me, Officer,” the man said. “Here.”

The trucker reached out his hand and gave the officer a fistful of bills. He cleared his throat.

“We passed the hat. There ought to be enough to get the woman and her girls started on their way.”

Back when he was a boy Armstrong had learned that cops don’t cry, at least not in public. So he stood there, speechless until
the lump in his throat disappeared and he was able to speak.

Then Armstrong shook the man’s hand firmly. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate it,” he said, his voice gruff from covering up his
emotion. “Can I tell her your name?”

The trucker raised his hands and backed away from the officer. “Nope. Just tell her it was from folks with families of their
own. Folks who wish they were home for Christmas, too.”

Armstrong nodded and thought of the fiercely loyal way in which people who made their living on the road looked out for each
other. As the trucker walked away, Armstrong counted the money and was again amazed. A small room of truck drivers had in
a matter of minutes raised two hundred dollars, enough money for three bus tickets to Tulsa and food along the way.

The officer walked back to the booth and handed the money to the woman, at which point she began to sob again.

“He heard,” she whispered through her tears.

“Ma’am?” Armstrong was confused, wondering who the woman was talking about.

“Don’t you see?” she said. “I came here completely desperate, hopeless. And I sat in this booth and asked God to help us,
to give us a sign that he still loved us and cared for us.”

Armstrong felt chills along his arms and remembered his own prayer—how he had asked God to send help and provide this woman
with angelic assistance. The truck drivers certainly didn’t look like a textbook group of angels, but God had used them all
the same. “You know, ma’am, I think you’re right. I think he really did hear.”

At that instant, a young couple entered the truck stop, saw the sobbing woman, and approached her without hesitating. They
introduced themselves and asked if they could help in any way.

“Well,” the woman said, “I could use a ride to the bus stop. See, I’ve got the money now, and I need to get to ...”

Armstrong stood up and walked discreetly away from the scene to a quiet corner of the truck stop, where he radioed dispatch.

“The situation’s resolved,” he said.

Then he walked toward his patrol car and climbed inside. Not until he was safely out of sight did he let the tears come—tears
that assured him he would never forget what had happened that night in the truck stop. As a patrol officer he had almost always
seen the worst in people around him. But that night, he’d been reminded that kindness and love do exist among men. And Armstrong
had learned something else. Sometimes God answered prayer using nothing more than a dozen bighearted truckers sharing coffee
at a truck stop outside of Akron, Ohio—and playing the part of Christmas angels.

P
aul Jacobs was working in the yard of his home in Austin, Texas, thinking about his brother Vince. It was Christmastime, the
most wonderful time of the year, yet Vince lay in the hospital struggling with a serious bout of appendicitis.
Help him, God...it’s Christmas... let him come home, Lord. Please
... He’d barely finished uttering the silent prayer when his wife, Laura, yelled to say he’d received a call from his brother’s
wife. He walked into the house, wiped the sweat from his brow, and picked the receiver up off the countertop.

“Paul, you better get down here quickly,” Vince’s wife blurted out. Paul could tell she was distraught.

“Vince?”

“Yes.” She began to cry, and Paul’s heart went out to her. “The infection’s all through his body. Doctors say it doesn’t look
good. Please, Paul, hurry.”

Paul hung up the phone and moved toward his wife, who had joined him from the next room when she realized the call was about
Vince.

“I can’t believe it,” Paul said. “That was Ruth. She said Vince is worse. The doctors think we should all be there.”

“You mean he might not make it?” Laura was astonished.

“I guess not. We better get down there and see what’s happening.”

Paul grabbed his car keys, stunned at the turn of events. His brother, Vince, was only thirty-seven and had been healthy and
strong until the previous week, when he’d been hospitalized with appendicitis. Doctors had removed the appendix, but during
the procedure the organ had burst, spewing poisonous infection throughout his body.