Me: I like your seagull friend.
Prodigal: Me too.
This is from In the Eye of the Storm by Max Lucado
To the onlookers, some things seem like an empty ritual, when to the person who is informed, they seem more significant than life itself. Take ol’Ed down in Florida. Every Friday evening about the time the sun is the size of a giant orange just about to dip into the water, ol’ Ed comes strolling along the beach to find his way to his favorite pier. He’s carrying in his bony hand a bucket full of shrimp. The shrimp are not for him. The shrimp are not for the fish. Strangely, the shrimp are for the sea gulls. Ed, alone with is thoughts, walks out to the end of the pier with his bucket, not saying a word. But that’s where the ritual begins.
Before long the sky becomes a mass of little dots screeching and squawking, making their way to ol’Ed there on the end of the pier. They envelope him with their presence. Their fluttering wings sound like a roar of thunder. Ed stands there and sort of mumbles to them as they’re feeding on the shrimp. In fact, he reaches in his bucket, and he throws a few up to them. You can almost hear him say, “Thank you. Thank you.” Within minutes, the bucket is empty. And Ed stands, there, almost as if raptured, in his thoughts of another time and another place. Then, without a word being spoken, he quietly makes his way back home.
Who is ol’Ed anyway? His full name is Eddie Rickenbacker. He’s was a captain in World War II. He flew a B-17 Flying Fortress. He and seven other men were sent on a mission across the Pacific to locate General MacArthur; however, their plane crashed in the water. Miraculously, they all made it out of the plane into a life raft.
Aboard their life raft, they fought the sun and the sharks. Most of all, they fought hunger, as all eight of these men ate and drank very little, until finally by the eighth day their rations ran out. No food. No water. They needed a miracle for them to survive.
After an afternoon devotional time, the men said a prayer and tried to rest. As Rickenbacker was dozing with his hat over his eyes, something landed on his head. It was a sea gull. That gull meant food… if he could catch it. And he did.
He tore the feathers off and they shared a morsel of it together. Then they used the intestines for fish bait. They were able to survive until they were found and rescued, almost at the end of their lives.
Later, Billy Graham asked Captain Rickenbacker about the story, because he heard that that experience had been used to lead him to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Rickenbacker said to Billy, “I have no explanation except God sent one of His angels to rescue us.”
Ol’Ed never forgot. He never stopped saying, “Thank you.” Every Friday evening for years until he died, he would go to that old pier with a bucket full of shrimp and a heart full of gratitude for the rescue to say, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Ephesians 1:2 (KJV)
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
