Several years ago, I heard of a young man who went to Indonesia for a summer internship in missions. He went to spend some time with a family that I knew lived there. He had been in the military as a Marine for 20 years and upon leaving the military wanted to see if foreign missions was a place where God could use him. He had attended a Christian University and part of the requirements for his degree was to do an internship overseas.
He went to an island and lived with a family and several others to observe and participate in their environment. During that time, the parents of the family had to go to another city for a few days to work on visa documents. So, they left the children with him and several other families who all lived together on the same compound. During that weekend, the whole group decided to go to the beach on Saturday for just some refreshment and family time. They were all enjoying the beach and swimming when suddenly a rip tide caught up two of the children, both from different families, and began to carry them along the shore, pulling them out further into the ocean. Quickly they formed a human chain and grabbed a hold of one of the children and pulled him back to safety. The other child continued to be caught up in the current gradually moving away from the shore. The human chain tried to move swiftly to the other child but were not able to grab a hold of him. The intern seeing the situation develop, dove into the swift current to try and catch up to the boy while the human chain moved to a different position to intercept him. He grabbed the child but they continued to rapidly drift in the rushing current. Both were being pulled under and the man struggled to keep the child’s head above the water. Finally, they both began to lose strength. The human chain was close and available but unable to reach them. So with one mighty push, he launched the child as best he could into hands of safety. The force of the push pressed him deep in the current and he never resurfaced, giving his life for the young child.
They found his lifeless body several hundred yards down the beach. He did the one thing that God wanted him to do. The child has now grown to a young man and is finding his place in God’s plan for his life. I know because he came to my house last summer to help his father with a project.
You may ask “Why would God allow this to happen?”. My best answer is, “I don’t know.” But I know that Gods purposes and plans are His and we may not know until eternity all that those events were meant to accomplish. Jeremiah 29:11 “ ‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope’”. He has created you and you are His, He has called you by name (Isaiah 43:1). He has work prepared for you to do, even if it is just one thing. (Ephesians 2:10).
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