Lost at Sea  

     August 2, 1945. Late in the war, a U.S. Navy aircraft crew looked for (unlikely) enemy submarines midway between Guam and the Philippines, far from any land. The fighting now was closer to the home islands of Japan.  

     Problem. Commander Chuck Gwinn was called to the rear. The antenna weight had broken off. As Gwinn looked through a window to inspect, he spotted people floating on the smooth waters. Some were in rafts, others only with life vests, or nothing. Shock!

     No one yet knew the USS Indianapolis had been sunk, five nights and four days earlier. This was the Navy's worst-ever sea disaster. 

     Writer Lynn Vincent wrote that God uses those attending to ordinary duties, even while wanting to be somewhere else - in this case, the action. "Commander Gwinn's faithfulness to God answered the castaway's prayers," she says. 

     Another rescue pilot later said the odds of Gwinn spotting the survivors were "a billion to one." Vincent wrote, "God answers believers' calls even from the 'uttermost parts of the sea' Psalm 139:9. 

     Some sailors were calling on God for the first time. One survivor, Cleatus Lebow, regularly had encouraged shipmates to trust in Jesus. After the ship sunk, 12 minutes after being torpedoed, taking with it the majority of sailors, Lebow taught some of the men floating with him the Lord's Prayer. 

     Long ago, a man lame from birth begged Peter and John for alms. "I have no silver or gold," Peter said. "but, what I have I give to you." Peter "gave him what he had," Vincent wrote, "an invitation to lay hold of something more precious a than all men can ask or imagine."  

     Food and water on the sea would have been like gold to the 316 survivors. They got something far more precious.

WORLD magazine