Every parent who reads that sentence feels it in the body before the mind catches up. A moment ΓÇö that is all it takes. A turned head, an ordinary act of care for one child, and suddenly the world narrows to a small form lying still at the water's edge. I have sat with parents in hospital hallways, and I can tell you there is no lonelier place on earth than the space between a cry for help and the arrival of it.
But help came. A man ΓÇö a stranger, visiting from Louisiana, whose name the news reports do not even give us ΓÇö came through the crowd, knelt beside the child, and began chest compressions. A helicopter stood ready to fly her out if needed. It was not needed. The superintendent later said that if something terrible like this was going to happen, the outcome could not have been any better than what it was, and he called that unnamed man the hero of the day.
Here is the detail I cannot stop turning over: the man knew CPR because his job had required him to learn it. He did not take that training expecting to kneel on a beach in Arkansas one summer Sunday with a child's life under his hands. He learned it because it was asked of him, on some ordinary workday, for reasons that likely felt routine at the time. And yet Scripture tells us, "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10). The good work was prepared before the man ever reached the water. He simply walked into it.
David knew what it was to be pulled from drowning. "He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters" (Psalm 18:16). Notice that David does not say the waters never came. They came in unto his soul. What he testifies to is the reach of God ΓÇö that from above, into the flood, a hand came down. And I have lived long enough as a pastor to notice how often the hand God sends has calluses on it. It belongs to a neighbor, a nurse, a stranger on a beach. The rescue is no less the Lord's for having come through human fingers. That is, in fact, His ordinary way. He delights to draw us out of many waters by means of one another.
So I want to say a word to you about preparation, because I think this story preaches it better than I can. You do not know, today, what your faithfulness in small things is for. The skill you learn grudgingly, the training you sit through, the habit of paying attention to the people around you ΓÇö these may be the very equipment of a good work God ordained before you were born. Readiness is a form of love. Learn the thing. Show up at the lake. Stay near enough to hear the scream. Most of the Christian life is not heroics; it is being present and prepared when the moment God appointed arrives without warning.
And a word, too, for those reading this whose story did not end at a fourth birthday ΓÇö who pulled a child from the water, or waited by a bed, and heard no good news. I will not pretend this reflection is simple for you. I only ask you to believe that the God who sent from above has not turned His face from you, and that the waters which took so much did not take His love. He is near to the broken places still.
Tonight a mother in Arkansas will tuck her daughter into bed. Somewhere a man from Louisiana will go on with his life, perhaps never fully knowing what his obedience in an ordinary training course purchased. And I will give thanks ΓÇö for the child, for the stranger, and for the God who prepared the good work, and the hands to walk in it, long before anyone reached the shore.