Was God There?
In 1943 George Hurley wrote a poetic description of the physical, mental, and spiritual hardships of shipboard life in the Arctic. There are seventy-eight verses in this work, and several touch on the issue of God’s presence in this remote corner of the world.
Rosary beads are my frozen tears / Will they thaw in future years?
Valor so common not recorded in history / Ships just vanish, a Russian mystery.
Dear friend, Jesus, to You I call / Help your lambs before we fall
I can’t promise I’ll be good tomorrow / But the Bible says you watch the sparrow.
No one is talking, I hear no voices / Am I spared? Has God made his choices?
Why did he leave me, I’ll never know / But it looks to me like the end of the show.
Drink a toast to the bastardly sons / Don’t mention the battle we surely won
God took a vacation, left us alone / Out in the ocean, so white with foam.
Oh we cursed you, old ship, you were so slow / But you took us there, where no one would go
Brought us back to the American shore / No one could ask for anything more.115
It’s ironic and very human that the seaman would credit his ship for a safe return home, but accuse God of abandoning him. As an unbeliever, I have done the same thing in times of stress. I wondered where God was, even while marveling at the selflessness of young Marines helping each other. Since becoming a Christian I have asked God to forgive this lack of faith and appreciation. One solid pillar of my faith is that God did indeed protect me many times in the past. I try to make amends for my blindness every day by thanking him for watching over me then and now.
Remember the wonders he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced.
—Psalm 105:5