What happened next is the part I keep returning to. A tugboat and other passing vessels turned aside from their own business and steamed toward a burning ship. By God's mercy, and by those ordinary hands, more than two hundred people were pulled alive from the water and from the smoking decks. At least five did not survive. Dozens more were still unaccounted for as rescuers worked through the night, and as I write, families wait at the ports for names they are afraid to hear and desperate to hear.
I have always been struck that one verse of Scripture holds both perils together. "When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee." (Isaiah 43:2). On Sunday, off Madura, the waters and the fire came at once ΓÇö flame above and sea below, and frightened people suspended between them. Notice what the Lord promises in that verse and what He does not. He does not promise that we will never pass through the waters. He does not promise that we will never walk near the fire. The promise is smaller and infinitely greater: I will be with thee. The verse assumes the flood and the flame. It stakes everything on the presence of God in the middle of them.
The psalmist knew these waters too. "They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the LORD, and his wonders in the deep." (Psalm 107:23-24). And a few verses on: "Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses." I do not doubt that many cries went up from that stretch of the Java Sea on Sunday morning, in more than one language and more than one faith. And I notice how the Lord so often answers such cries ΓÇö not with a parted sea, but with a tugboat captain who changes course. Heaven's rescue frequently arrives wearing work clothes. The passing crews who turned toward that burning ferry did what the priest and the Levite on the Jericho road would not do: they refused to pass by on the other side. Whether they knew it or not, they were the hands of Providence that day.
But I will not preach only the rescue and hurry past the grief. Five people, at least, did not come home. Others are still missing, and their families are living in the hardest country there is ΓÇö the land between hope and mourning. Christian faith does not ask us to pretend such losses are small. The Scriptures are full of lament precisely because God welcomes honest sorrow. If you pray this week, pray for the searchers still on the water, for the mothers and fathers waiting at the harbor, and for the survivors who will hear those blasts in their sleep for years to come.
And then let the event do its quiet work in us. Most of us will never leap from a burning deck. But every one of us sails daily past people who are, in their own way, in the water ΓÇö drowning quietly in grief, debt, addiction, or loneliness. The question the Java Sea put to those passing vessels is the question put to us: will we turn aside? "Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven." (Psalm 107:30). Until the Lord brings us all to that haven, may He find us willing to alter course for one another.