Things happen sometimes that leave you wondering long past the incident. The story of my cousin, Larry Gearhart, and his two sons is an example. I was a teenager when this occurred, and the questions still come to mind fifty years later.
Larry was a young veterinarian, successful, a good father and a Christian, not the type to cut corners where his children were involved. So when it came time for him to purchase a boat for his family to use on Lake Michigan he bought the best . It was advertised as “unsinkable”. Maybe he should have learned from the Titanic that God does not want us to dare Him with boasts about our invincibility.
Larry and his two little boys, Larry Jr., 10, and Ezra, 8, set out on their maiden voyage on a sunny Saturday morning. What could happen on a clam sunny day on the big lake? Perhaps we will never know for sure. Saturday evening approached and the boat did not return. Panic did not set in until it became dark. The Coast Guard began a search. Nothing turned up the first day and by the second day there was little hope that the little family would be found. Three days passed and all hope disappeared. Plans were contemplated for a memorial service.
It is not clear what happened to the boat, but suddenly Larry and his boys were in the water and the unsinkable boat had disappeared beneath the waves. Larry, anxious to try out his splendid unsinkable boat had not thought it necessary to get extra flotation devises. The boat had only two floating pillows. He fitted the pillows to the boys, admonished them to stay together, and then swam away from them. He told them he was going for help. It is more likely that he knew he would not be able to reach shore and he did not want the children to see him drown.
The boys clung together through the night and the next day, but during the second night they drifted apart. It is Ezra from whom we learned the rest of the story. He was able to hold on through the third day, and night, but finally on the morning of the fourth day the exhausted child uttered what he thought was his final prayer. He prayed, “God, if you are going to save me you’ll have to do it now because I can’t hold on any longer.”
At that instant he heard a voice calling to him, “Hold on son! We see you! We’ll pick you up!
A Jewish couple were out yachting that morning. As the wife sat watching the play of sunlight on the clouds and water, she saw something she had never witnessed before. A shaft of sunlight dropped from the clouds like a giant spot light highlighting Ezra bobbing in the water. They pulled the little boy from the waves and soon there was rejoicing.
Was the shaft of sun light a miracle or coincidence? I have witnessed those beautiful shafts of light hundreds of times, yet not once have I seen one fall from the sky. They just seemed to be there. I have to believe God’s hand was directing that light. Coupled with Ezra’s prayer it falls in the miracle category for me.
Miracle is defined in the dictionary as an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs.
Perhaps the shaft of light was just the simple answer to a child’s prayer, but had not Larry Jr. and his father also prayed for help to come? That we’ll never know, for their bodies were recovered days later.
Is God selective with His touches of miraculous power, or does it take a child’s heart to believe that miracles are a touch of God’s love He wants us to experience?
Miracles still do happen. They are coupled with prayer, but if they were common place we would lose our awesome respect for them.
Three miracles happened there on Lake Michigan. One little boy was plucked from the water exhausted and praising God, but Larry and Larry Jr. met their Master that day and walked into Heaven.
That miracle is available for all of us, and it is the greatest .
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