A CRIPPLED British submarine lay on the bed of the ocean for two days and nights. The crew did all in their power to raise the craft, but all was in vain.
At last the commander called the crew together and all joined in singing "Abide With Me."
Abide with me, fast falls the eventide,
The darkness deepens, Lord, with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me!
Then a drug to calm the men in their last minutes before the end was distributed.
As the men moved away one of them stumbled against a part of the submarine's equipment. A tremor was felt through the boat, then immediately it began to rise to the surface. Brought under control again, it arrived safely in port. All the crew were saved.
The hymn the men sang was their cry of direst need, uttered in the deepening darkness of their position beyond all human hope. Never, perhaps, has that hymn been sung under more tragic circumstances. How solemn to think that the most human aid can provide at such a time is but a drug to dull the pangs of death!
Who would deny that there is the closest connection between the singing of the hymn and the circumstance that caused the raising of the sub. For God, a faithful Creator, was down there in the darkness of the ocean floor, and well may we thank Him for His mercy to that crew.
But, dear reader, what would you do and to whom would you turn in such a crisis? Do you know the God who delivered from so great a death, and does deliver? If not, then your case is not less hopeless than that of those trapped seamen. For just as the captive crew were held beneath the sea, so the whole human race has been plunged beneath the tide of death as the penalty of sin.
Has anyone ever escaped the power of death. Only one blessed Man, the Man Christ Jesus. He, though truly God became a man in order to be the mediator between God and man. In marvelous grace He gave Himself for all, bearincb our sins in His own body on the tree, and went even into death to save those whose sins He bore.
ETERNAL Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the rest less wave.
Who bidd'st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep ;
O hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea.
Messages of the Love of God 6/22/1975