Anyone familiar with the third chapter of Daniel will sit up and take notice of this experience recalled by the Antarctic explorer, Ernest Shackleton, over 100 years ago.
As it was with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, so it was with Shackleton and two of his companions, as they toiled desperately to cross South Georgia Island. Historians have mostly passed quickly by this incident, as if it somehow embarassed their secular world-view.
Truth does have a way of doing that.
I love reading this again this morning. Wonderful when the presence of God is tangible even though we know He is with us.
I was brought up to believe that the age of miracles was long behind us, but I no longer see it that way. I’m not about to question someone else’s experience and declare that they weren’t being helped. If I look back at my own life, I can see that I was helped along in many ways. If one considers the path of my life and some of the misjudgments I’ve made along the way, it’s obvious that God has been generous in His providence.
With this in mind, I view accounts such as Shackleton’s with an open mind. We don’t always know where we fit in God’s plans. Maybe he has something in mind of which the individual involved is unaware. If one looks at the Bible, it’s obvious that God’s plans move forward and that He can put to good use the efforts of faithful persons. All I can do is stand in awe and give thanks for the ways God has worked good in my life, and the lives of others.
God is omnipresent and can express Himself anywhere and anyhow He so chooses, It is discomforting to know how imprisoned we are to our five senses as being the only reality. Jesus talked about our eye being single – which eye was He referring to? Could it be the one given to us with our second birth?