I never really thought much about angels walking the Earth until the accident.

I was living across the state in a small apartment, where I was working on a one-year contract to start my new career.  I had been home all weekend, visiting my wife and children, as I usually did.  I went to bed early on Sunday night, and arose about four o'clock Monday morning to make the five-hour drive back across the state on a superhighway.

There was very heavy fog that night, but traffic was light.  I was driving at 65 miles per hour, the legal speed limit.  Little did I know that up ahead of me a man had missed his exit, and stopped in the middle of the road.  As I came around a curve, there he was, directly in front of me.  I had no time to react.  I had no time to think.  I hit his car in the rear at full speed.  My car stopped instantly.  His car shot forward about 100 yards.

I do not remember the moment of impact.  I do not know how long I sat there, wondering if I was alive or not.  The next thing I remember is hearing someone tap on my window.  When I looked over, there was a man, asking if I was all right.  I said that I wasn't sure.  He said, "You better get out of that car.  It's starting to smoke pretty bad."  He was right -- there was heavy smoke coming from under the crumpled hood of my car.

I unfastened my seat belt.  I was somehow able to stand, although I was shaky.  All of my limbs appeared to function.  The man helped me quickly get my personal items out of the car, and into the back of his pickup truck -- a beautiful, bright red pickup truck.  Just as we got into his truck and pulled away from my smashed car, it burst into flames, which quickly engulfed the entire passenger compartment.  It was like something out of a bad television show.  That man had saved my life, although it didn't occur to me at the time.

By this time traffic had stopped, and I could hear sirens -- one of the truckers on the road probably radioed in for help.  I asked the man to drive me up the road to the car I had hit, so I could see if the people inside needed help.  He did.

The man told me he needed to get to work, so he helped me get my items off his truck into a pile on the side of the road next to the other car.  I thanked him for his help as he climbed back into his truck, and drove away.  

The people in the other car were all right, as it turned out.  I glanced back and saw police cars arriving on the scene, so I just waited by the car.  The police made arrangements for us to be driven to a hospital, and said they would talk with us there.  Then the driver of the car I had hit asked me a curious question.  "How'd you get all the way up to my car from back there?"  I told him about the man in the pickup truck who had given me a ride.  His reply: "Pickup truck?  I didn't see any pickup truck!"

He didn't see the man and his truck.  His wife didn't see the man, either.  The police didn't.  The firefighters didn't.  The truckers who came on the accident within moments didn't.  A hitchhiker who was on the side of the road and witnessed the entire accident didn't.  Nobody who was at the accident scene that night saw the man who saved my life, or his bright red pickup truck.

Just me.

Do you believe that angels walk the Earth?

I know what I believe.