Your prayers like God’s Word will not return to you void.
“Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after
many days” (Ecclesiastes 11:1).
Back in the late nineteen forties, evangelist Everett
Bachhelder started a most unusual ministry prior to settling in Nome, Alaska.
At the time, Alaska was not yet a state of the
USA.
He optimistically saw this remote northern
territory and its indigenous Eskimo people as the
mission field God had selected for him. As a means of “spreading the Word” in a
vast, desolate world of frozen pack ice and icebergs Everett believed he could
place his “tracts” with the message; “God Loves You” in various kinds of
bottles and throw them into the icy waters to drift wherever the Lord would
take them. The printed message had been translated into many of the different
languages of that part of the world.
One of Everett’s
missionary bottles did not float very
far. It floated to the north of the Seward Peninsula in Alaska. There an old Eskimo man had gone off
to die. It was the custom among his people that when a person was that old they
did not want to be a burden to their younger family so they would go off onto
the ice and allow themselves to freeze to death. This old Eskimo man had done
just that. However, God loved this old man and it was not God’s will for the old man to die before
receiving the gospel! Near death the old Eskimo laid upon the cold ice waiting
for his last sleep when a bright green, floating bottle bobbed against the large
ice floe where he was lying. He saw the bottle and crawled over to take it from
the icy water since it appeared to have a note of some kind rolled up inside
it. The old man with frozen, trembling fingers opened the bottle and read the
note inside. It read; “God Loves You”
and it explained how to receive Christ as your Savior. The note also had the
name and address of the person who had written it. Changing his mind about
dying, the old man returned to civilization and wrote to Everett. These were his words; “I read your message and I knew someone
loved me.”
Some time later, Everett
visited the old man’s village and learned that the old man had recently died,
but not before he and his whole family had accepted Christ!
Like Everett’s
bottle ministry, hopefully, this daily blog (my message in a bottle) goes out
into the world telling people of all nations to know, “God Loves You.”