Acts 27:39-44, The Shipwreck

39Morning came, and the ship's crew saw a coast that they did not recognize. But they did see a cove with a beach. So they decided to try to run the ship aground on the beach. 40They cut the anchors loose and let them sink into the sea. At the same time they untied the ropes that were holding the rudders. Next, they raised the sail at the front of the ship and let the wind carry the ship toward the beach. 41But it ran aground on a sandbank. The front of the ship stuck firmly in the sand, and the rear was being smashed by the force of the waves.


42The soldiers decided to kill the prisoners to keep them from swimming away and escaping. 43But Captain Julius wanted to save Paul's life, and he did not let the soldiers do what they had planned. Instead, he ordered everyone who could swim to dive into the water and head for shore. 44Then he told the others to hold on to planks of wood or parts of the ship. At last, everyone safely reached shore.

My dad owned an apartment building in south Minneapolis. Summers, he paid me to paint, wallpaper, or whatever else needed to be done. One afternoon...while I should have been painting an apartment...I was playing on the roof. I wasn't paying close attention and remember unintentionally stepping backwards off the roof with my right foot in mid-air.

But I didn't fall...just gasped with relief.

I was walking down a path in South Vietnam. I inadvertantly glanced in a bunker and saw a Time Magazine. I immediately dove into the bunker to grab the magazine before somebody else took it. Just as I hit the bottom of the bunker a mortar landed within feet of where I had been standing.

Not a scratch...just a gasp of relief.

Most of us don't know about our close calls. What if we had been a prisoner on Paul's boat? Would we have known how close we came to death? But for the presence of the Apostle Paul, we would have met our doom.

All of it completely out of our consciousness or control. It hardly seems fair, but that's often how death arrives. How many of us remember how close we came to death when we were born? But for the grace of God, through Christ, we were born dead and would have remained so till this day.

So, here we are...not a scratch. Do I hear a gasp of relief?

Live boldly out there today...