Me: Are you eating breakfast or is breakfast eating you?
Prodigal: I’m enjoying either way.
Here is a story for you to lift you up.
This is from the book Angels Beside You by James Pruitt
During World War II a young man named Corporal William Devers, First Battalion, Fifth Marines. A twenty-one year old from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who listed his religion as “none,” was an agnostic.
Now an agnostic is not to be confused with an atheist. An atheist flatly denies the very existence of God or any other divine being, whereas in agnostic believes it is impossible to know anything about God or the creation of the universe and refrains from committing himself to any religious order or belief Agnosticism is not a flat denial of God.
Knowing of Devers’s belief, a number of his fellow Marines set about to change the corporal’s mind about God. But no amount of arguing, Bible quoting, or coercion could sway the young Marine. A few members of the unit began to warn others to distance themselves from the nonbeliever when they hit the beaches, for he was sure to be one of the first to die.
This kind of talk did not seem to bother the corporal, but one person was concerned: Captain Francis E. Hand, the First Battalion chaplain. He had observed the efforts of the other Marines to convert the young agnostic and had elected not to interfere, hoping instead that Devers would come to him to discuss the matter However, as time went on, the corporal showed no such interest.
On the night before they were to depart New Zealand for some still-unknown island, the chaplain asked Corporal Devers to join him for a walk on the deck of their troopship. It was an invitation that the corporal had been expecting for some time.
The two men talked about home, family, and friends for a while before the chaplain went straight to the matter of God. Devers, respectful of the man’s rank rather than his profession, explained his reasons for his belief, citing a number of supernatural happenings in the Bible as reason enough to question the book’s validity.
Surprised, Hand asked, “Oh, then you have read the Bible?”
“Yes,” answered Devers. “Enough of it to know that it asks you to believe a lot of things that can’t be logically explained.”
“Then you don’t believe the Bible to be a true story?”
“No, sir, I’m sorry. I just don’t buy it.”
The chaplain stood silent for a moment, then asked, “Do you still have a Bible, Corporal Devers?”
“No, sir,” replied the boy, explaining that he had lost the one he had been given at the reception station a long time ago, but that it didn’t matter because he didn’t need one anyway.
The chaplain withdrew a small Bible from his shirt pocket and offered it to Devers. “Here, take this one, son. I have more than enough of them–even for the nonbelievers.”
Devers refused, again stating that he had no need for a Bible. Saluting, he politely excused himself and returned below deck, leaving the chaplain standing alone at the ship’s railing to ponder their discussion.
at 0900 hours, July 22, 1942, the Marines departed New Zealand and began the journey that would take them to the shores of a small island called Guadalcanal.
At 0613 on the morning of August 7th, the first salvos of naval gunfire arched into the beaches of that deadly island and America began its march to repel the Japanese and drive them back to Japan. As the chaplain watched elements of the Second Marines go over the side to launch the initial attack against the smaller island of Tulagi, he noticed Corporal Devers standing one deck below, also watching the activity. Catching the young man’s eye, Chaplain Hand raised a small Bible in the air and nodded toward the boy. Devers smiled kindly, but again refused the chaplain’s offer.
By 0930 it was the First Battalion’s turn to go over the side and into the LCPs that would take them to the beaches of Guadalcanal. Surprisingly, reports of enemy resistance were almost nonexistent. This made more than a few members of the high command nervous. Where were the Japanese?
Moving shore without a shot being fired, Devers grinned at the chaplain as he came by and remarked, “You see, Chaplain, it all worked out okay without me carrying a Bible.”
Before Hand could reply, Devers waved goodbye and took off to join his squad, which was moving into the jungle. Tapping the small Bible in his shirt pocket, Chaplain Hand made a silent vow to himself that before they left this island he would convince Corporal Devers that the Bible was more than just a well-written book of fairy tales that the boy perceived it to be.
The chaplain did not encounter Devers again until the morning of the 19th. A large Japanese force had been sighted near a village. Two companies of the Fifth were to attack the enemy and secure prisoners for interrogation. This would be the unit’s first all-out encounter with a sizable Japanese force, and many of the men were relieved to see that Chaplain Hand had volunteered to go along with them on the operation. Seeing Devers near the point element, the Chaplain made his way to him and was about to relate a dream he had had the previous night, but before he could do so, the platoon leader gave the order to move out for the objective.
Making the way through the jungle for over a mile, the unit turned east for another seven hundred yards and found the village. Moving quietly into position, they caught the Japanese totally by surprise. In a bitterly contested battle, the Marines overpowered the enemy force, killin all but ten, while sustaining losses of four killed and eleven wounded.
Escorting one of the prisoners to a containment area, Devers saw the chaplain kneeling over a seriously wounded Marine A shot suddenly rang out and Chaplain Hand was knocked backward into the dirt, a red stain spreading rapidly over the right side of his utility jacket.
“Sniper!” yelled someone.
Pushing the POW to the ground, Devers rushed to the chaplain’s side.
Although clearly in great pain, Chaplain Hand managed to say, ” My…left pocket….Take ……it…please.”
Devers reached into the wounded man’s shirt pocket and removed the small Bible. Looking at it for a moment, he commented, “I’m not so sure, Chaplain. No disrespect, but it don’t seem to have done you much good.”
Struggling to hold back his pain, Hand replied, “Last night, I had a dream. In the dream….an angel appeared and told me that I had to make you take that Bible. Take it, son…please.”
Devers hesitated for a moment, then shoved the Bible into his shirt pocket to satisfy the wounded man. Within minutes, the sniper had been dispatched by a rifle squad, and the corpsmen were at the chaplain’s side administering morphine. The bullet had broken the chaplain’s right collarbone–painful, but he would live.
As the morphine injection began to take hold, the chaplain squeezed Corporal Devers’s hand. “Angels are not to be taken lightly, my boy. They are God’s messengers. They rejoice when a nonbeliever is converted to His word. Remember that.”
Devers nodded and walked away, convinced that the remarks were merely the words of a wounded man under the influence of morphine. Angels and dreams, thought the young marine. More fairy-tale stuff, but Chaplain Hand was a good man, and if taking the Bible would somehow comfort him, then so be it.
The village and the prisoners secured, the Marines began their trip back to their main base. Corporal Devers’s squad was on the point. They had been traveling for about twenty minutes when they rounded a bend in the trail and stumbled right into a Japanese patrol. A sudden, violent firefight erupted at very close range. Two Marines on Devers’s right went down. Another on his left was killed instantly. Devers, his heart pounding, fired into Japanese until his rifle was empty.
Desperately, he tried to reload the weapon. A sudden impact knocked him off his feet. His chest felt as if a tree had fallen on him and his mind began to fade into darkness. William Devers was certain he was dying.
What seemed to the young Marine to be a lifetime was, in fact only a matter of a few minutes. When he opened his eyes he found the five remaining members of his squad kneeling around him.
“What happened?” he asked.
One of the Marines who had tried his hand at converting the agnostic in New Zealand smiled and held up the small Bible that the chaplain had urged him to take. There was an ugly-looking hole in the cover. “I didn’t realize agnostics had the privilege of having guardian angels,” said the Marine holding the Bible.
Sitting up, Devers felt a ripple of pain shoot through the right side of his chest, but there was no blood. “What are you talking about?” asked a confused Devers.
Passing the Bible to the young agnostic, the Marine replied, “I think someone you’re not sure exists is trying to tell you something, Billy boy.”
William Devers stared at the hole in the book for a moment, then opened it. A bullet from a Japanese officer’s pistol had torn through the Bible, ending its journey at the book of Psalms 91:7, which read, “A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand, but is shall not come nigh thee.”
Corporal William Devers survived the war and returned to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he married and began a prosperous construction business. When he died in the summer of 1989, he was best remembered by friends and neighbors for his unselfish devotion to time and service to his church, in particular, the time he spent talking with young people who had doubts about the stories in the Bible.
His daughter Frances, still has the small Bible that saved her father’s life that day. It is encased in glass and stands opened to the book of Psalms. The left side clearly shows the bullet hole, and on the right side there is a small indentation where the bullet stopped at the beginning of Psalms 91:7
Psalm 91:11
For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
