Christian Leadership Training Program--CLTP 5 DFO--Power and Protection!--True Life Stories of God's Help in Crisis!--Part 4
(Recommended reading for 9 years and up. Selected stories may be read with younger children at adults' discretion.)
The Deadly Snow
By Sara Nealy
Winds shrieked around us, the raging snow advanced on our lonely car like an otherworldly figure in a billowing [1] white shroud [2]. Inside the sedan, I held Nina Lou, our 16-month-old baby, on my lap, while three-year-old Richie snuggled between his father and me. Richard struggled at the wheel, veering to the left, skidding to the right, charging through shallow drifts only to face larger barriers of snow.
It was January and we were on a desolate highway in the Nebraska plains. A hundred miles ahead was the town of Gordon, where Richard had a wonderful new job. We were a southern family from the Panhandle of Texas [3], and this was our first experience with treacherous winter storms of the north. And we'd been so foolish! Snow had been falling this morning when we left our hotel, but the radio report had said the road north, our road, was open to traffic; the wind seemed to be dying, too. "Let's go for it," Richard had urged.
I was anxious to get to our new home. "Yes," I said, "I'm sure we'll be all right."
I couldn't have been more wrong. Though we made good time for a while, the flakes began falling faster, the wind picked up, and we no longer saw other cars on the road. Now the snow was storming around us, swirling and howling like an angry thing with waving arms and flowing robes of tattered white. I looked away from Richard's tense face so he wouldn't see the naked fear on my own. "Should we turn back?" I asked.
"We have to go on." His voice was grim. "If we try to turn around, we'll get stuck for sure."
The words were barely out of his mouth when I felt the momentum [4] of the car falter, its writhing and straining-forward motion subsiding into a gentle rocking and finally a full stop. We were locked in the deadly grip of the snow.
For a few minutes, we sat mutely in the comfortable warmth of our car, the engine and heater running, the gas indicator pointing almost to "Full".
Then Richard turned off the switch. "We must ration the gas to run the heater," he explained calmly. "It may have to last us a long time."
Instantly the cold began to penetrate [5]. We huddled together, Richie and Nina Lou between us. Richard and I took off our coats and layered them over the four of us for insulation [6].
After about an hour, Richard flipped the radio on. "It's a full-scale blizzard," said the local newscaster. "The temperature is now zero and falling, the wind out of the north at eighty-five miles an hour."
"It's time for heat," said Richard. He turned the ignition key. A lifeless click hung in the air. He tried again. Again. Our eyes met. The cold motor was dead. We didn't say what we thought: Cold. Dead.
At that moment, I gave up hope, like a drowning person who doesn't know how to swim. The children were asleep. Exhausted by fear and tension, I joined them.
I was awakened by Richard's shaking me. "Sara, you really shouldn't sleep, you know," he said softly. "We must stay awake." (Note: Because your body temperature drops during sleep, it's better not to sleep too much when battling extreme cold.)
I didn't want to open my eyes to our bleak world. But suddenly, unbelievably, I felt a trace of warmth. Richard had a little fire going! He had used an aluminum coffeepot we had tried to return to friends just before leaving home. They had insisted we keep it, and now, by cutting holes with his pocketknife for ventilation, he had converted it into a mini-stove. His source of fuel was the thick blueprint mailing tubes, stacked high on the back seat, that his company had asked him to take along to his new headquarters. He had whittled cardboard chips into the pot and lit them with matches he just happened to pick up when he left the hotel.
As this evidence of God's provision dawned on me, my hope was restored. We had acted unwisely--recklessly--but God had prepared us to survive! The small fire wasn't enough to warm my physical body, but it kindled my spirit--and that made a crucial difference. I remembered the Words of Jesus: "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the World" (Matthew 28:20).
Night settled around us. While Richard kept vigil over the fire, I made sure everyone stayed covered and tucked in. And the night was finally over.
The children woke up happy. Richie tugged my sleeve. "Look, Mommy, our own snow! Can we have some?"
Sure enough, right before us on the dashboard, snow had sifted in to form a little snowbank. "No, you mustn't eat it," Richard said quickly.
Nina Lou was wiggling excitedly and laughing as her little pink fingers eagerly begged.
"Why not, Richard?" I interceded. "They haven't even had a drink in twenty hours."
He hesitated. "I'm afraid it will make them sick."
"But the snow's there in front of us, almost as if God provided it. Surely His clean snow can't hurt us!"
Richard relented, and I made tiny snowballs, bite-size so we wouldn't have to hold them long. They tasted so good! Afterward, of course, there were bathroom needs. How should I handle it? We had long since become too cold to shiver, and every unit of body heat had to be preserved. At my suggestion, Richard moved the little stove closer and I eased one child at a time down beside it. As I looked at the floor of the car wondering what to do about the puddle, it turned to ice before my eyes! I'd known it was cold in the car, but this visible proof was shocking.
The hours wore on slowly, and with each one, our chance of being rescued grew more remote. According to the radio, the wind continued at 90 miles an hour and the temperature was 17 degrees below zero. Newscasts reported all roads impassable and mentioned increasing numbers of fatalities--people who had been crossing the road to help neighbours, farmers going to their barns to check livestock. We stopped listening.
Again the swirling white-grey sky darkened into night. Richard was very still now; our fuel supply had given out, so he had no fire to tend. I kept a steady watch, rewrapping and tucking our coverings so each piece would provide maximum warmth. No one had spoken for some time. Then Richie broke the silence, "Mommy, know what I want? When we get home, I want some bread and butter and mashed potatoes and gravy."
"I'll fix it for you, darling," I whispered. "I'll fix it every day."
With that as a bedtime story, he closed his eyes and went to sleep.
It was the first and only mention of food. For more than 30 hours, the children had been as quiet as hibernating bear cubs, not even showing signs of hunger. I saw this too as God's provision, sparing me a mother's anguish of seeing her children in want. I felt God's Love and concern for my children, and I thanked Him with deep gratitude. But I knew we couldn't survive much longer.
To keep my thoughts from sliding into despair, I went back over the past 36 hours, remembering how God had provided for our needs during each one of them. God wants me to believe He will deliver us out of this storm, I mused [7]. And then I began to pray aloud: "Father, if You want to save us, I believe You can. And I believe You want to. But You will have to do something quickly. We can't make it till morning without heat."
I didn't hear a word, but His reply, in my mind, was perfectly articulate [8]: "What would you have Me do?"
I thought about it. "Well, I guess first You would have to stop the wind. Yes, You would have to stop the wind because the only thing that can come through this snow is a big plow, and they don't send those out on the highway until the wind stops."
At that instant, I knew in the depths of my soul that God was listening. I wasn't just talking to myself. The very God of the ages was with us. There was an eerie [9] stillness, a silence as loud as a shout. God had stopped the wind!
My heart went wild with excitement, but I made myself go on in a quiet voice. Richard was asleep and I didn't want him to think I was suffering delusions [10]. "Now, Lord, please nudge those men who run the snowplow. I know it's past midnight, but don't let them give up. I know there are lots of roads, but send them straight to us."
My thoughts raced. Snow had nearly buried our car. If our rescuers didn't see us, they might run into us. Well, I thought, I'll just have to listen for their chains [11]. That's how I'll know they're coming. When I hear the chains, I'll turn on the car lights. I sat there imagining how I would hear the chains clinking on the highway, hearing the first faint sounds, straining to be sure, listening with satisfaction as they grew louder, closer--then jumping to turn on the lights.
I replayed these events again and again, until the cold interrupted my reverie [12]. A heavy aching had taken hold of me, squeezing the last remnants of warmth from my body. I could feel ice creeping up my backbone, and with it a terrible lethargy. I wanted to surrender to it.
"Please Lord," I prayed. "I don't know if I can hold on much longer, but I can't give up because I believe. I believe You are working right now to bring help. Just make them hurry."
Again I heard the resonant clinking of the chains on the road, such a pleasant, rhythmic sound, so nice to think about.
"Father, I'll tell everyone of Your greatness. I will tell them that You care. I will tell them that You are able. I will tell them."
The clinking kept getting louder--such a happy sound to go to sleep by--louder, louder!
A voice then said to me, "
Sara wake up! It's real! Turn on the lights!"
I sprang for the light switch. "Wake up, Richard, wake up!" I shouted.
The snowplow pulled up behind us. The men came bounding through the snow, shouting and laughing, clanging their shovels, throwing snow recklessly in huge scoops to get to the car. They wrenched the doors open, cheering and crying, hauling us out of the car, doing our rejoicing for us. We were like zombies, our bodies too cold to move, but they shoved us along toward safety, chattering out their elation at finding us alive.
We were the only ones. They had found more than 50 people dead.
It was nearly 2:00 a.m. Our rescuers told us how they had wanted to give up; it had been a gruesome day for them--a nightmare. But the dying of the wind had been like a command: Go and find survivors. Just as they were ready to go home--at the very time I had asked God to nudge them--they'd felt compelled to go out again.
So the great plow had come with rescue cars following slowly behind--warm little islands of comfort, stocked with food, fruit, thermos jugs of hot coffee, even milk for the children.
I fell asleep in the back seat of one car, Richard in another. Hours later I was awakened by an angelic voice. It was Richie, singing "Jesus Loves Me," and the sun was shining on an unbelievably beautiful world of white.
I had seen God's provision for our needs in a time of mortal danger. I had asked Him to sustain us. I had believed in His power to deliver us. And He did. God is faithful.
I will never, ever be the same.
* * *
Only One Key
By Marjorie Lewis Lloyd
Sundar Singh*. It was he whose little world collapsed when his mother died as he was near fourteen. Feeling hopeless and dejected, he was angry at the World. In his despair he bought a copy of the Christian's Bible so that he could tear it up page by page and throw it on the fire.
Then, in deep gloom, he retired to his room and stayed there for days. One night he prayed earnestly, "Oh, God--if there be a God--reveal Thyself to me tonight." The express train from Ludhiana to Lahore would go by at five in the morning, and he determined that if God had not revealed Himself by then, he would go out and lay his head on the rails and settle the matter. He prayed on through the night.
During the night the Lord appeared to him and said, "Why do you persecute Me? Remember, I gave My life for you on the cross."
At a quarter to five he rushed out of his room and awakened his father. He told him he had seen a vision of Jesus and was now a Christian!
His father said, "You must be mad! You come while I am sleeping and say you are a Christian--and yet it is not three days past that you burned the Christian book!"
Sundar stood rigid, looking at his hands. "These hands did it. I can never cleanse them of that sin till the day I die!" Then he turned to his father. "But till that day comes my life is His!"
And that's the way it was. Because he wanted to win India for Christ and because there was much prejudice against all things Western, he adopted the yellow robe of the sadhu* and wore it till his death.
Sadhu Sundar Singh had a great burden, too, for Tibet. And he was a born adventurer. Almost every Summer, the rest of his life, he managed somehow to get into Tibet, even though he was often persecuted.
One Summer things had gone especially bad. From the day he crossed the mountains there was trouble. Villagers refused him any hospitality. He nearly drowned in a swift-flowing, icy river. Food was scarce. He was cruelly treated. Lamas* and priests led the peasants in their persecution of him. Preaching Jesus in Tibet could easily mean death. But death held few terrors for him. He was concerned only with being true to his Lord.
Matters reached a climax in a town called Razar. He began preaching in the market place, sleeping at night in the unsheltered compound where traders and beasts pressed together for warmth. At first his preaching drew interested crowds. But when the chief lama heard of his preaching, the interest of the people changed to fury.
One morning the guard from the monastery seized the sadhu and dragged him away to a brief trial. And as he looked into the face of the Grand Lama, he knew that one of two things would happen to him. He would either be sewn inside a wet yak* skin and it would be left in the heat of the sun to dry and shrink until it crushed him to death; or he would be thrown into a deep, dry well on top of the corpses of those who had been thrown there before him, to die of starvation.
It was the well. He was dragged there and beaten until a blow sent him headlong into it. Then he heard the lid being locked. The stench was sickening, for many others had died there.
Sundar prayed for deliverance, but how it could come he had no idea. One of his arms was broken, so he could not possibly climb to the top. Even if he could, he could not get out, for the Grand Lama himself had the only key, and by now it would be jangling again on the key ring under his robes.
Hours passed and became days. Three days and nights he had spent in the unbearable air of the well. And then suddenly he heard a key turn in the lock. The lid opened, creaking on its rusty hinge. Then he felt a rope touch his face. At the end of the rope was a loop. He thrust his leg into the loop and grasped the rope with his good arm. Slowly he was drawn upward to the top, where he collapsed on the ground and filled his lungs with the fresh night air. But when he looked around, his deliverer had disappeared!
Slowly and painfully he crawled back to the place where he had slept before. Snatches of sleep refreshed him. When it was light, he bathed, ridding himself of the smell of death--and went back to the market place to preach!
An hour later he was arrested again by furious monks. The Grand Lama questioned him over and over again. Who had helped him escape? Was it a man or a woman? And whoever it was, how did he or she get the key? That was the big question. There was only one key, and it should be in the Lama's possession. The Lama pulled aside his robes, stood up, and drew the bunch of keys from the chain.
"There is but one key to the well. It should be here. Who stole it to set you free? How . . . " Suddenly his features took on a look of terror. He turned to the monks, furious and inwardly afraid. "Take this man away . . . away from the town. . . . Set him free . . . and never let him set foot again in Razar!"
The key to the well was still on his own ring!
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* Sundar Singh (1889-1933) was raised a Sikh, which is a religious sect in NW India that is an offshoot of Hinduism and Islam. After his conversion to Christianity he underwent persecution many times in his efforts to win the people of India and Tibet to Jesus. For more fascinating stories about him and his life, see Good Thots II (pgs. 1337, #75; 1647, #434; 1828) and ML Volume 11 (Book Reviews pgs.74-75, 278-279).
*sadhu: a Hindu holy man
*lama: a Buddhist priest or monk in Tibet or Mongolia
*yak: a long-haired ox of Tibet or Central Asia
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Sundar trusted God for everything--for protection, for food, for whatever he needed. And when asked about his seeming immunity from danger, he said simply that God protected him. And evidently God did. For even wild animals did not harm him.
On one occasion he was staying in the home of a friend in the Simla Hills. Supper was over, and the two sat quietly on the veranda. When there was a break in the conversation, Sundar moved away, slipping across the lawn toward the forest trees that bounded the garden. He stood there, gazing at the lights of villages across the valley.
Suddenly his friend, still on the veranda, tensed and rose to his feet, terrified at what he saw. Creeping slowly out of the trees came a leopard. It paused, gazed for a moment at the motionless sadhu, and then moved toward him. The friend dared not shout, for fear of causing the animal to spring. But he couldn't be silent either.
Quietly Sundar turned, saw the animal, and stretched out his hand toward it. The leopard rose, moved forward, and stood beside Sundar, who stroked its head as he would a pet animal. The watcher relaxed. There was no need to fear. There never had been. The leopard stood, lifting its head to Sundar now and then. And when the sadhu turned to the house, the leopard's powerful form disappeared among the trees.
Is it too much to believe that the Angels who released Peter from prison and who shut the mouths of lions for Daniel could do the same for Sundar Singh?
Or for you?
(Editor's note: Although we wouldn't recommend approaching wild animals as Sundar Singh did, still his story shows how the Lord can replace fear with faith, and how faith can perform miracles, such as even calming and soothing wild creatures. The Lord did it for Daniel in the lion's den, and He can do it for us, too, if the time comes that we need it!)
* * *
A Strange but Wonderful Answer
By Marjorie Lewis Lloyd
Charlotte, many years ago, was a student at a Christian college, Pacific Union, in a town called Angwin. At the insistence of the dean [13] of women, she had memorized the verse, "The Angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them" (Psalm 34:7). But little did she realise how soon she would need the assurance of those Words.
To help with expenses, Charlotte travelled twice a week by bus some distance from the college campus to a town where she worked for a fine family who paid her generously. All went well until one night, tired and not watching carefully, she boarded the wrong bus--one bound for San Francisco.
There she was in the big city, alone and surrounded by strangers. She had no idea, in that huge terminal, how to find a bus that would take her back the way she had come. There was not a single woman on the loading platform. A drunk was trying to make conversation. The information booth was closed for the night. Not a policeman was in sight. And bus drivers were too busy even to hear her timid question. What should she do? She was frightened and confused.
Then, like a flash, she remembered the verse she had memorized--the words the dean had told her she would need someday. "The Angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them."
Finding a rest room, she went in and locked the door. Then she prayed, "Dear Lord, I'm tired and lost. I'm afraid. I don't know anyone here. Please help me find my way home. According to Thy Word, deliver me. Amen."
Then she stepped out into the main area of the terminal again. Just at that moment a young man passed in front of her, and she noticed immediately that he was carrying what appeared to be a large black Bible!
A Bible! At least he must be a good man--a man with a Bible. Without talking to him, she followed him. He led her along several long corridors to another part of the terminal and finally up a flight of stairs to a remote loading platform. She never could have found her way. And there it was, a bus ready to pull out, with big letters on the front--ANGWIN.
This bus was going exactly where Charlotte needed to go. Now right at this point it is necessary either to discard the story as false or accept it as a miracle. For anyone at all familiar with Pacific Union College knows that no bus, unless it were a chartered bus, would ever pull out of the San Francisco terminal with "Angwin" on the front. It would likely be necessary to change buses in another city. Or even if a bus should go in that direction, it would not be able to negotiate the tight curves leading up the hill to Angwin. So the story becomes "incredible"--which, according to the Random House Dictionary, means "so extraordinary as to seem impossible." Yet should we limit God?
But back to Charlotte. She followed the young man with the Bible onto the bus. There was only one seat left. But the young man stopped, as if to speak to the driver, and let her pass. She took the seat, amazed and thankful, and continued to stare at the young man, whose back was turned.
And then something strange happened. The bus driver didn't seem to see the young man at all. He turned and got off the bus, but no one paid any attention. Only Charlotte continued to watch him intently. She followed his form a few feet, in her steady vision. And then, with her eyes fixed upon him, he simply vanished--like a light going out!
Was he an Angel--guiding a tired, lost girl? You decide.
* * *
Car Trouble
By Ron Bailey
The other day my wife and I were talking with a neighbour, and the subject of feeling close to God came up. Immediately I thought of one time in particular, a time of great uncertainty for Carolyn and me. It was the Spring of 1955, early in our marriage. Carolyn was 18, I was 22, and our first child, Karen, was a year old. I had just finished my tour of duty with the Navy in San Diego, California, and we were heading home to Tacoma, Washington.
Packing and getting on the road had worn us out. We had only enough money for gas and groceries. My separation cheque [14] from the Navy would be mailed to my folks' home in Washington. And then what? I had no trade, no job. How would we get by? This was in our minds and in our conversation on the road back home. Frankly, there weren't any answers, and that was scary.
"I'm exhausted," I said to Carolyn.
"Me too," she replied wearily, as she tried to soothe our fretting baby girl.
Dusk had fallen in the Siskiyou Mountains. Pulling our eight-year-old business coupe [15] into a clearing by the roadside, we camped for the night in the 21-foot trailer hitched behind the car. The trailer had been our home in California, and we were pulling it north to Washington with us.
We were miles from any town, along a two-lane road that led through the mountains of northern California. Not much traffic passed along this stretch except for an occasional truck whizzing--a little too fast, I thought--around the curves.
Early the next morning, just after breakfast, I noticed it: a big black 1937 Buick Sedan stopped right at the bend of the road. "What a strange place for anyone to stop," I said to Carolyn. "You'd think the driver would know better."
The car was half on, half off the road. No one could pass without going into the opposite lane. And one of those big trucks might be coming around the bend. . . .
"Carolyn, I'm going to go up and speak to those people about moving their car." I had seen a man get out and go to the back of the car, then a woman. As I approached, they both looked frustrated. Hopeless, you might say. A boy about six was looking out of the window.
"This is a dangerous stopping point," I called out.
"I can't get it to move," the man said to me. "It just locked up. I think it's this back wheel. But I tell you, it won't move."
"Well, maybe you should try pushing it off the road."
"It won't move," he said again helplessly.
"Got any tools?" I asked the man.
"Well, no, ah . . . I'm not very mechanical, I'm afraid. We're on our way to Oregon, where I have a job prospect. This couldn't have happened at a worse time."
All of their possessions were inside the car and strapped on top of it. It was clear that this young family had been struggling. Everything about them spoke of their need. The old car. Well-worn clothes. Belongings that most people would yard sale [16] today. That job prospect was their only hope, and now, with barely enough money for gas, they were faced with car trouble.
I directed the man to go up the road and the woman to go down the road to warn approaching traffic. Then I got my tools, jacked up the Buick and took off the rear wheel.
The brake linings had wedged over one another and had forced the round drum into an oval shape that was locked in place. I forced off the brake drum with a pry bar and hammer. Brake drum, brake shoes, lining--all useless.
It would take some sort of intervention to put this family, desperate to get to that job interview, back on the road. "The best I can do," I said to the man and his wife, "is to pinch off the brake tube to this wheel so you won't lose fluid when you press the brake pedal. That means you'll have three wheels with brakes and one without. That will get you to the nearest town, but you must stop there and replace the drum and brake shoes."
I could see the worried looks cross their faces. I figured the reason--they didn't have the money for parts or repairs. "Do you have any relatives or friends in this part of the country?" I asked.
"No," said the man. "No one."
Carolyn and I didn't have much either, but at least we were heading toward family.
"Well, on this mountain road you can't drive very far with only three working brakes. It's just too dangerous. . . ." I still hadn't figured how I would close off the brake tube to that one wheel. Maybe I could make something to cap it. Or pinch it shut. As I was considering possibilities, the couple's little boy ran up. He'd been playing just down the bank.
"Daddy, Daddy!" In his excitement he could hardly get his breath. "There's a car down the bank, and it's just like ours!"
"Oh, Son," said his father, a bit wearily, "it may look like ours, but it isn't." His mind was far away, somewhere up the road, at the next town, wondering how he was going to buy the parts he needed to get them to Oregon.
"Son, you just think it looks like ours. Now you run and play. We've got to fix this car somehow."
"But Daddy, it is just like ours!"
He was so positive that I said to the man, "Why don't we just have a look? It couldn't hurt."
The car was overturned about 60 feet down the embankment [17], and as we climbed down I could see that it had landed near some large boulders near a river. The engine and transmission were missing--taken by scavengers. So were the wheels.
But as I inspected it, the man and I looked at each other. Our curiosity turned to wonder. The car was identical to his. Same model, same year, same colour. And though the wheels were missing, the brake drums were still intact.
I had brought my pry bar and hammer and some wrenches, and I busied myself in taking off the brake drum that was closest. I was balancing on the rocks and working with the wrenches while the man and his son poked around the car.
"Could I borrow that pry bar?" the man asked.
"Sure," I said and handed it over.
Intent on my work and still thinking about the coincidence of an identical wreck being at the exact spot in the road where this man's car broke down, I heard the two working with the pry bar to open the trunk of this old hulk. Still locked, or rusted shut after all these years . . . .
Then I heard the creaking sounds of the trunk hinges opening. "Hey, there's a lug wrench!" shouted the man. "I could sure use that . . . and there's a paper bag." I heard the rustling of paper. And then silence.
The man came around to where I was working. He stared at me for a moment. I could tell it was difficult for him to speak. He held a brown paper sack.
"Do you have any idea what's in this sack?" he asked finally.
He stood there swallowing hard, trying not to cry. "Here . . . see? New brake shoes!"
With the necessary parts provided, I repaired their car, Carolyn fixed them a meal, and they started off down the road, waving. Alone? Helpless? Not at all. You see, I knew that Somebody Upstairs cared very much for those three, and He was providing for their every need.
Right then and there, things no longer seemed so uncertain for Carolyn and me and Karen, either. For I also knew that if God could provide for those people, He could provide for us.
And as I was telling my neighbour the other day, for 35 years He has done just that.
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How Brakes Work:
Brakes stop a car when you step on the brake pedal, because a part called a "brake shoe" is pressed against a cylinder called a "brake drum". The drum is connected to the main axle where the car's wheels are attached. When the brake shoe presses on the drum, it makes the drum stop turning, which stops the axle turning, and stops the car. The brake shoes have linings made of heat-resistant asbestos, which cause friction of the brake shoe against the drum. As these brake linings wear down, it's very important that they are replaced, so that the brakes work well and the car can be driven safely. In the story, however, all the brake parts of one wheel were ruined, and because they are attached to the axle, they prevented the car from moving at all. Proper maintenance of a car can often prevent accidents or car trouble before it happens, so it's good to understand how a car works and how to keep it in good condition.
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* * *
"Hang On! We'll Get You Out!"
By Robert Ebeling
There was something ominous about the giant smokestack [18] looming [19] over us that cloudy September morning in 1977. In all my 33 years I had never worked inside a thing like that.
Towering 650 feet, its top scraped the muddy cumulus [20] clouds that rolled across the grey sky. A thunderstorm was expected. The last thing we need, I thought. The job was dangerous enough without the threat of rain and high winds. But Bob Silvers, a burly forty-five-year-old construction worker from Kansas City, had worked on smokestack jobs before and seemed confident.
He and I had been hired by Gunite Construction Company to apply a sealer [21] coat to the inner liner of Columbia II, which is what the Wisconsin Power and Light Plant of Portage, Wisconsin, called this main stack.
It was hazardous work, but the money was important to me. Pam and I and our three-year-old son lived in a nice house in a good neighbourhood. We were a steady, churchgoing family, and I was proud of my ability to provide for them.
As we stepped inside the damp, echoing sixty-foot-wide base and I peered up through sixty-five stories of black tubing with a bull's-eye view of the sky, icy tingles raced up my spine. But I felt better when I saw the sturdy, well-designed scaffold [22] on which we could work. The frame was made of four aluminum beams overlaid with two-by-twelve-inch oak boards forming a substantial platform.
Four steel cables soared up to the top of the stack. Attached to each cable at the platform's corners was a small electric motor that would power our ascent and descent.
Bob and I stepped onto the platform. Black walls of the liner slipped past and the small circle of light above widened until finally we reached the top, which had narrowed to twenty-two feet in diameter. I took a moment to peer down at the hazy countryside dotted with tiny houses and buglike cars. Tall lightning rods sprouted from the mouth of the stack, which was ringed by a narrow catwalk. My coveralls snapped in the wind.
"Time to get to work, buddy," laughed Silvers. "Got to beat that storm."
By 6:00 p.m. that day, we had sprayed the thick black sealer about 250 feet down. We had another twenty minutes to work, and we were about 400 feet up (about 40 stories high), when I switched on a motor to move my edge of the platform down ten inches. The corner of the scaffold glided down, but then it didn't stop! My side of the platform kept moving down! The motor wouldn't switch off! I frantically flipped the switch on and off. I beat it and cursed it. But the humming motor wouldn't stop! The scaffold began to tip more and more; it reached a sickening thirty degree slant. A big drum of sealer skidded across, slid off the edge of the tilted platform and crashed 400 feet below with a hollow boom. Silvers was yelling. The platform sank further. The oaken boards were sliding!
Struggling to the high side of the platform, I screamed into the intercom that a motor wouldn't shut off. Silvers was bellowing. "Cut the power! Cut the power!" But the foreman below didn't seem to understand what was happening.
As more slid off the aluminum frame, Bob and I each lunged [23] for a cable. The oily braided steel did not afford much grip, but by wrapping our legs around it and using all our strength, we found that we could support ourselves.
Finally the motor's power was cut and the foreman shouted up: "I'll get help!"
The platform, which I once had thought was so secure, now dangled crazily, creaking from its own weight.
For an endless hour we hung above forty stories of emptiness. Every so often someone at the base of the stack would yell, "Don't worry. We'll get you!" But nothing happened.
Time dragged on with excruciating [24] slowness.
"God in Heaven," I cried, "where is everybody?" My arms became numb. My muscles ached. And every five minutes or so, up would float a faint voice assuring us that help was on the way.
Three hours passed as we clung to the cables like monkeys on a string. Every fibre of my body cried out with pain and exhaustion. I thought how simple it would be to just let go and fall into the velvety blackness.
Today was Pam's birthday. I had promised to call her. She would be waiting.
My legs seemed paralysed. Could I ever straighten my fingers? Silvers, his voice hoarse from yelling, was begging someone to hurry. I felt my grip slipping.
"God help us," I moaned, "I can't hold on any longer."
Sharp metal slivers stung my hands as I slipped down helplessly. Suddenly my feet struck a projection in the cable. The motor! It gave some support. "Slide down to the motor," I told Silvers. "It helps a little."
Another hour passed. On the ground outside milled a crowd of ironworkers and townspeople, including the fire chief, sheriff, and plant superintendent [25]. No one knew what to do. It was finally decided to let a big bucket down to us from the top. But how? And with what?
Someone thought of a helicopter and called the Air National Guard. But Bob and I didn't know this. All we heard was an occasional faint call assuring us. "Hold on; we'll get you out!"
"But we've been here over five hours!" I called in desperation.
Now it was midnight. My throat was parched. It had been twelve hours since we had had food or water. A cold wind moaned up the clammy [26] stack. My flesh tightened and I shivered.
"I can't stand this any longer," I cried.
"You'd better!" Silvers said grimly, adding, "All we can do now is pray."
Suddenly there was a beating sound through the wind. A helicopter, right over us! We strained to see tiny, winking lights against the black sky. It hovered, went away, then all was quiet.
We didn't know that it was a private helicopter attempting to lower a basket to us. But by what miracle could a chopper lower a basket--spinning crazily in the wind--in the black of night into a twenty-two-foot-wide opening that the pilot couldn't even see?
Thunder rumbled, echoing up and down our vertical tunnel, and the sky lit up through the bull's eye above. Then rain slashed us in long strings of needle-sharp ice. I thirstily licked if off my face, but it chilled me to the bone as it soaked through my coveralls.
"For God's sake," I screamed into the wind, "somebody help us!" Again came the faint shout that help was coming.
Then all was quiet. And in the deathly stillness, I suddenly knew. No help was coming. Everything I had placed my trust in had failed; the scaffold that seemed so solid, the men working below, even the helicopter that had come and gone.
There in that towering tomb I realised that there is nothing or no one in this World on which we can place our complete dependence. Machines can malfunction; people can fail. Only our Creator is for sure.
How many times had I used God's name these past terrible hours? Yet, as surely as I hung there, I knew I had been using it as a charm [27], a talisman [28], like knocking on wood for luck. It had been like my churchgoing these past years, a mechanical habit.
In losing every worldly support and hanging helpless before death, Truth became clear to me. I knew that God wasn't just a name, but a living Person Who had told us that no matter where we would be, in the uttermost part of the Earth or trapped in a sixty-five-story smokestack, He would be with us.
It was then I felt His presence, surrounding me, comforting me. My hysteria and panic subsided. My muscles still ached, and I was freezing, but I had lost much of my fear.
Then the intercom crackled: "We've got an Air National Guard helicopter coming in."
Finally we heard the chopping overhead. For an instant we saw winking lights, but then they blurred and disappeared. Fog! Fog was rolling in! The chopping noise disappeared. The intercom explained that the wind was too fierce and the fog too thick for the pilot to stabilise over the stack. Moreover, the fog-enshrouded lightning rods were a hazard.
My heart sank. Then the voice on the intercom added that a bigger helicopter was on its way. Earlier, five men had been lifted to the catwalk at the top of the stack by a smaller helicopter. They had carried nylon band slings bound to their chests. These would be lowered to us so that if the entire platform fell we would have some support.
Soon the slings were fed slowly down the 250 feet. We were told to slip into them and not to worry if the platform went; the straps might stretch twenty feet but would hold. Twenty feet?
Now it was 1:00 a.m. Wind sucked at our water-soaked clothing.
"Dear Lord," I whispered, "I know that You are a mighty help in time of trouble. Thank You for being here."
The mighty beating of the chopper [29] now resounded through the stack and our spirits soared, only to crash again when told that the pilot found it too difficult to maneuver in the strong wind.
"Oh, Father, help us to hold on," I prayed.
At 4:00 a.m. the intercom came alive to tell us that two Coast Guard helicopters had arrived. "They have more sophisticated rescue equipment," we were told. Then we heard one, but saw nothing.
A subdued intercom voice explained that the pilot was not only having problems with fog, wind, darkness, and tall, invisible spikes, but once again was trying to drop a metal bucket-cage that was being whipped around crazily by the wind into a very small opening.
"Rescue is impossible now," the voice continued. "We must wait until the wind dies and the fog lifts, maybe by day- break. . . . "
For a long time it was silent. Only the wind boomed through the steel tube. Suddenly, again a chopper's beating. We didn't know that in a last desperate attempt the Coast Guard chopper had somehow lowered the wind-whirled bucket to the men on the catwalk. They had miraculously caught it, and were able to guide it into the stack.
There was a sudden banging of metal, and we squinted up to see the basket, looking like a tiny dot, descending in the dim light. As it swung in circles between us, I caught it, then realised the metal cage could hold only one person. It was two feet square and five feet high.
"Get in!" ordered Silvers. "I've been with the company eighteen years and have been through more hassles than you have. They'll get me a little later."
Somehow I managed to open the door of the wobbly cage. Weak and shaking, I squeezed my stiff body inside, then cried out, "Ready!"
The cage lifted like a wild elevator.
"Dear God, thank You!" I gasped. "I'm going up, getting out!" I could hear the helicopter labouring against the wind. Suddenly the basket shuddered, hesitated, and began falling. As it neared the platform, I shut my eyes, fearing the blow would send the platform to the bottom.
Then the basket jerked up again and we seemed to fly . . . forty feet . . . sixty . . . eighty. . . . But again it stopped and again we dropped sickeningly.
"Oh, God," I prayed, "help Silvers." Again we were climbing, the cage spinning like a top, crashing into the steel sides of the liner. Suddenly I was outside, and there was the whole wide sky!
Tears streamed down my face as the basket, now swinging in a 200-foot circle like a runaway carnival ride, began settling to the earth. Then we crashed heavily on the rain-soaked ground. Mud oozed into the cage. Sweet cool mud. Someone helped me onto a stretcher and into an ambulance. As it rushed me to Devine Hospital, I prayed for Silvers, hoping they would soon get him out. We had been trapped in that stack nineteen hours without food or water.
When I awakened in the hospital, it was late morning. I learned that the weather had turned too severe for another basket rescue. Silvers was still in the stack, and my heart ached for him.
I leaned forward in my bed and through the window could see dark Columbia II towering in the distance. Helicopters, looking like dragonflies, hovered around it.
I prayed that the Lord would sustain my friend. Somehow I felt that just as He had given me calm and taken away my fear, the Lord was with Silvers, and he would come out all right.
(Note: Bob Silvers was finally rescued at 11:40 that morning. Lt. Rick Hauschildt and his copilot, Jeff Kaylor, described the two rescues as the most difficult and frightening mission of their lives.)
The biggest lesson I learned in those nineteen awful hours was where to put my trust--in God, our Father, and His Son, Jesus Christ. All mechanical support gave way, and even my own spirit was overwhelmed by fear, until I remembered to pray to One Who is greater than any fear, and He didn't let me down.
"Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into Heaven, Thou art there: if I make my bed in Hell, behold, Thou art there. Even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me" (Psalm 139:7-8,10).
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Discussion Questions
Following are a number of questions which can be applied to each of the stories in this magazine. After reading each story, you can choose several of these questions for discussion. You do not necessarily need to ask or discuss every question after reading every story, but please choose those which apply and are helpful.
1. Is there anything that could have been done to avoid the difficult situation the people in this story found themselves in?
2. The people in the story responded in one way to what happened to them.--What are some other ways that people might react if the same thing happened to them?
3. Does this story show you anything about the benefits of the training, education and instruction you have received? Please discuss.
4. How might you have reacted if this had happened to you? How do you think you should react in similar situations? What would you pray and ask God to do?
5. Did you feel that the people in these stories could have been more of a witness? If so, how?
6. What lessons could you learn from a situation like this?
7. Why do you think God allowed this situation for these people?
8. Is there anything in these stories that you don't understand?
9. Did the Lord do a miracle in this story? If so, how did He use the miracle in the lives of the people in the story? Did it bring a change in their lives?
10. What specific answers to prayer are there in this story?
11. Does this story encourage your faith that God will help you in difficult, dangerous or seemingly impossible situations?
12. Have you ever experienced the Lord doing a miracle to save your life or someone else's? If so, what was it? Did it change your outlook on life or your relationship with the Lord or others?
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Definitions
(The meaning given is for the use of the word in the story & does not cover <R>every meaning of the word.)
[1] billowing: rising, swelling, bulging
[2] shroud: a cloth or garment in which a dead person is wrapped for burial
[3] Panhandle of Texas: the part of Texas that sticks out and looks like the handle of a pan on the map
[4] momentum: the force with which something is moving forward
[5] penetrate: to get through
[6] insulation: a material that does not conduct heat, which thereby keeps the heat in
[7] mused : thought, meditated
[8] articulate: clear, understandable
[9] eerie: causing fear, strange, weird
[10] delusion: a false belief
[11] chains: Cars tend to slide in snow and ice, so to prevent this, chains are fixed on their wheels which cause the tires to dig into the snow rather than slide on top of it.
[12] reverie: dreamy thoughts
[13] dean: faculty member of a school, college, or university who is in charge of a certain group of students and/or area of study.
[14] separation cheque: last salary payment when leaving employment
[15] coupe: a two-door closed automobile
[16] yard sale: When people want to get rid of their old belongings, they sometimes arrange them in their yard or garage with a sign inviting passersby to come and buy them.
[17] embankment: a mound of earth or stones used to hold back water or support a roadway
[18] ominous: threatening, like a sign of something bad about to happen
[19] looming: appearing as large and dangerous
[20] cumulus: a type of cloud formation that is rounded at the top and flat at the bottom, so that the clouds look a little like piled-up mashed potatoes
[21] sealer: a substance that seals a surface
[22] scaffold: a temporary structure to hold workmen who are working on high places, & their materials
[23] lunged: plunged, jumped forward suddenly
[24] excruciating: very painful, torturing
[25] superintendent: overseer or manager
[26] clammy: cold & damp
[27] charm: a word or act that is supposed to have magical power to help or harm people
[28] talisman: an object that is supposed to have magic power
[29] chopper: slang term for helicopter
(Definitions condensed from the World Book, Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary <R>& Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary.)