A bright July sun shone down on a group of happy boys and girls’ all dressed in summer togs, as they boarded a bus one morning. The little ones carried spades, pails, and little sailboats—all off to spend Saturday by the seashore—all lighthearted and free, full of bright hopes for the day’s fun, wading, and paddling, and swimming in the calm blue ocean.
All went well until some of the older boys suggested renting a boat and going for a row—a thing they had been specially warned against, as there were hidden rocks and shoals along the coast, where more than one had perished that summer. But “boys will be boys,” and while the Sunday school teachers and older folks were busy looking at the little ones, five older boys hired a boat and were out on the deep sea before they were noticed. As two of them were changing places in the boat, the boat capsized, throwing them all into the deep water. Their cries of distress turned all eyes in the direction of the upturned boat, and three of them could be seen clinging to the keel: but two had sunk to rise no more till the sea gives up its dead.
A coast guard boat hastened to the rescue and the three boys were brought back to shore half dead. That tragedy cast its gloom over the whole company. Twos and threes quietly withdrew, and took early buses home, some in tears, and all in gloom and sadness for the loss of the lives of those two boys.
It was a solemn lesson for those three boys (and for all) that day. That sin of disobedience had claimed the lives of their two companions and had nearly cost them their own. “Children, obey your parents,” Ephesians 6:11Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. (Ephesians 6:1). “Hearken unto me, O ye children: for blessed are they that keep My ways.” Proverbs 8:3232Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children: for blessed are they that keep my ways. (Proverbs 8:32).
“In the midst of life we are in death,” dear boys and girls, and it is safest and best to be ready, so that should the call to depart come at morning, noon, or night, at school or work or play, all will be well. And the only way for this to be so is to have the Lord Jesus as your own personal Saviour. Then you will have a life over which death has no power eternal life.
ML-11/29/1964