Angels are around us every day, everywhere.

JHSEsq collects angels playing flutes

They are mentioned many times in the Bible, perhaps most notably when an angel appeared to inform Mary that she was not only pregnant, but would give birth to the Savior, and again on Christmas Eve when they sang “Gloria” to signal his arrival. My favorite Christmas carols have always been “Angels We Have Heard on High,” “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” and “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.”

Hebrews 13:2 reminds us to “entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.”

In addition to being messengers, angels are also rescuers. Acts 12, for instance, describes how an angel was sent to release Peter from prison. After waking him up and telling him to get dressed, the angel walked him right out of the prison, accompanying him the full length of one street and assuring that he was safe before leaving him. Afterward, he said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord sent his angel and rescued me . . ” so he went to the home of Mary, the mother of John (who was also called Mark), and told the people gathered there how he had escaped.

On April 29, 1976, my father underwent open heart surgery for the first time. He was 57 years old; I was 19 and about to receive my Associate of Arts degree from San Joaquin Delta College. I planned was to transfer to a college in Orange County in the fall of that year.

I remember being incredibly frightened because my father had, as far as I knew, been healthy until then. And fathers are supposed to be invincible — strong providers for their families, especially their daughters. He had been ignoring symptoms of heart disease for some time. The local physician who treated him for many years described him once as “stoic” — an apt characterization of a man who stubbornly kept overhauling Lincoln transmissions, despite attacks of angina, because his youngest daughter was set to head off to college. Nothing was more important to my parents than seeing their two daughters graduate from college, secure steady jobs and be self-sufficient.

So it was quite shocking when my father went to the hospital to have surgery for a hernia, but instead ended up coming home that same morning with an appointment to see a cardiologist in Sacramento the next day. At that moment, my world changed forever: It was the point in my life when I learned, as every child eventually does, that my parents were vulnerable beings.