In 1915, while serving as a missionary, twenty one year old Lyman Holmes Rich recalled waking “as a hungry lad on the shores of the Pacific at Seaside, Oregon while traveling without purse or script. The previous night we slept in a school house…with newspapers for coverings, as the people who attended our meeting had not seen fit to take us home. The Lord must have prompted Sister Clara Stucki, for she had sent a nice fruit cake to the post office at Seaside and it was, I believe, the grandest cake I ever ate.” (Letter to Bill Rich, July 5, 1957)
His witness that the Lord was watching over him on “hungry” days was also a witness of the miracle of the anticipation of God who saw his hunger in advance and prompted Sister Clara Stucki in Paris, Idaho to put a fruit cake in the mail to a boy whose own mother had died when he was six days old.
That fruitcake fed his body and brought him the care of an angel mother. “I know the end from the beginning; therefore my hand shall be over thee” promises the Lord. (Abraham 2:8)
Whether great or small, “God has not ceased to be a God of miracles… neither have angels ceased to minister unto the children of men.” (Mormon 9:15; Moroni 7:29). In anticipation of the miracles each of us would need, God sent a tiny Baby to Bethlehem. That Baby did not bring deliverance in the way those of His day expected, He brought much more. He brought strength for what we cannot do, light in the darkness, the ability to turn affliction for our gain and the miracle of making mere mortals become like Him with all that He has. He knows your heart, He knows your needs, your desires, your hopes, your dreams and He and His angels will go before you anticipating all you require “to bear you up.” (D&C 84:88)