My father and I had been at our houseboat doing some work on it. It was a very hot day, so several people had come to the shore at the state park swimming area about 500 yards from where our houseboat was moored just in front of Norris Dam. You could hear lots of laughing and squealing of kids as their voices echoed over the water and bounced off the dam concrete. At one point the squealing turned to screaming and then yells for help. We stopped our work and listened to see if this was just kids' playful joking or actual screams for help, but after a few minutes of it we jumped in the bass boat and motored through the “no wake” zone toward the shore. It took us several minutes to navigate around the other boats toward the buoys that marked the swim area. At some point the yelling stopped. We arrived in time to see the body of a man with blue jeans, blue face, and no shirt laying motionless on the shore. Everyone had left but a few people who had pulled him out of the water. This man had ridden his motorcycle to the lake and decided to take a swim in his jeans. Apparently, he didn’t realize how steeply the shore dropped off to deep water and was in over his head before he knew it. He was unable to turn around and to get back to the shore. Despite the attempts of others to get to him and bring him back, he had already drowned. Knowing there was nothing we could do, we turned the boat around and let the officials do their work. My father, who was a physician, had seen people who had expired before during his medical training in the Emergency Room and Med School, but this was a first experience for me as a young teen, aside from those bodies in the funeral home who had been carefully made up and prepared for a half-open casket and public viewing. I had lots of questions about what happens to the body when someone drowns. My father answered all my questions from a medical viewpoint. Then as I quietly processed the incident on the way back to the houseboat and the car ride back home, I wondered about this man’s soul. Was he ready to leave this earth? Did he have a relationship with Jesus? Was he in heaven now? Or somewhere else, i.e. hell?
Israel had rebelled against God and had followed the occult gods of the land. Because God loved His people, He wanted them to repent, but they were in way over their heads and unable to give up their connection to the evil ways of foreign gods. So, God allowed them to be defeated and taken into captivity. Jeremiah the eccentric prophet, had warned Israel to repent and turn around, head back toward God. The leaders did not like what Jeremiah had to say against them and at one point threw him into a cistern full of mud, but God had him rescued and pulled out (Jer. 38). Jeremiah never quit trusting God. In one of his writings Jeremiah says, “... the waters closed over my head, and I thought I was about to be cut off. I called on your name, O LORD, from the depths of the pit. You heard my plea: “Do not close your ears to my cry for relief.” You came near when I called you, and you said, “Do not fear.” O Lord, you took up my case; you redeemed my life.”(Lamentations 3:53b–58 NIV) God still hears our cries for help. No matter how deep in the pit of sin and rebellion, or hopeless despair we are, God hears our cries when we call out to Him. The apostle Paul says, “for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”(Romans 10:13 NIV) We are all in over our heads. We cannot save ourselves from sin and death, but God made a way through Jesus to be rescued from the pit of hell. He loves us and wants us to spend eternity with Him and has made a way for us to graciously be saved, but it is our choice whether we call out for a relationship with Jesus to be rescued from the evil that has us overwhelmed.
Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!