Strength for Today

Eddie Rickenbacker, the famous ace pilot from World War I days, was shot down over the Pacific and spent 21 days on a life raft. After he was eventually rescued, he wrote these words of the experience, “In the beginning many of the men were atheists or agnostics, but at the end of the terrible ordeal, each, in his own way, discovered God. Each man found God in the vast, empty loneliness of the ocean. Each man found salvation and strength in prayer, and a community of feeling developed which created a liveliness of human fellowship and worship, and a sense of gentle peace.”

I never cease to be amazed how someone who doesn’t believe in God going into a difficult experience – whether it is an ordeal like that which confronted Rickenbacker, being a prisoner of war, or a having sickness which takes you to the point of death – comes out of that valley knowing that God is there.

Pressing the claims of Christ upon a friend, I was rebutted by his telling me he didn’t believe in God, calling himself an atheist. Taking a different tact, I began to talk about evidence for God’s existence. Finally he stopped me, saying, “You know, I can’t believe in God and lead the kind of a life I’m living right now.” Honest? Yes. An atheist? Not really.

In God’s sight, he was a fool, and wise is the person who, like Saul who tried to kill David, can say of himself, “I have played the fool!”

The good thing about God’s grace is that it’s sufficient to turn a fool’s heart toward God and change his foolish ways as he finds a sure path for his feet, his emotions and his heart.

Used with permission from Guidelines International Ministries. To learn more about Guidelines and the ministry, send an e-mail to info@guidelines.org. You may also visit www.guidelines.org.

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. – 1 Corinthians 1:18