A Greater Hand Than Mine
After surviving a crash landing at sea, several crewmembers of The Old Squaw reminisced about their harrowing experience and expressed a belief that something more profound than “luck” was involved:
I cannot help but feel that there was something bigger than luck riding with us that day. The fact that we were able to stay with the formation until there were no enemy fighters around, and the fact that our escort arrived shortly afterward might be explained by luck, but when that rescue boat appeared on our course, at just the right moment, I was sure that the Omnipotent was guiding us that day especially. I cannot help but feel, too, that a greater hand than mine or Bob’s was on the controls when The Old Squaw sat down in the Channel. The captain of the rescue boat told us one last thing which made us thank God for our safety. If we had landed a few miles to the south, we would have been caught in dangerous rip tides. If we had landed a few miles to the north, we would have been in the minefields… that particular area was the only place where we could have done so safely.269
Many things had to go right for this crew to survive such a disastrous mission. Even though each detail had a logical explanation in itself, these men saw a miraculous pattern in these details and experienced a deepening of their faith as a result. We always have the same choice. We can accept the logical explanations and even the role of luck in our lives, or we can look more deeply for evidence of God’s guiding hand. We know that God created an intricately designed and beautiful universe that we can rightly consider miraculous. Sometimes it takes a child’s eyes and sense of wonder to see the miraculous in our own lives.
No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.
—1 Corinthians 2:9