Rescued from the River

It was an intensely hot summer day in early July when our family decided to go for a swim in the nearby Illinois River. We had been camping there on its shore for a day and were all anxious to get in and get cooled off.

After a while of swimming and playing in the water, three of my brothers—Joel, Nathanael, and Timothy (age 12)—along with Joel’s wife, Kayla, decided to try to cross the river. They found a spot down the river where it was shallow, but as they were making their way across they began to drift downstream a ways (except Nathanael, who by this time had already swum to the opposite shore). Suddenly they were in very deep water where not even Joel (the tallest of the three) could touch the bottom! Panic-stricken, Kayla and Timothy began to thrash around in the water, struggling to keep their heads above the surface. Joel had to think fast—what should he do?!

The rest of us were sitting on the river’s bank drying off when my sister-in-law, Martha, looked downstream and saw a lot of splashing. “I hope they’re okay down there, I don’t know if they’re just having some pretty serious fun or what,” she commented with concern. As we sat watching them, a nervous feeling began to creep over us… was something wrong?

“I would think we’d hear a cry for help if they’re really in trouble,” I said, trying to comfort myself and those around me. But soon the nervous feeling grew so intense that I had to go see! My brother, Josiah, and I simultaneously jumped up and began running downstream. They were quite a long ways down the river from us and the water dragged at our feet. “Were they alright? Why weren’t they crying for help? Where’s Timothy? Were they really drowning?” These and many other questions wildly spun around in my mind as we crashed, stumbled, and splashed down the river, praying as we went.

Then it came—amongst Kayla’s screams I recognized a faint cry of distress from Timothy, followed by a “Heeelp!” from Joel. The sound of their cries hit my stomach like a lead weight, my heart pounded wildly in my chest—-all uncertainty fled away—they were drowning! They needed help and none of us were good enough swimmers to save them. “Lord, save them! Have mercy!” we cried out. Moments later things got quieter, the thrashing stopped and—behold—all three heads were keeping steady above water! I could hardly believe my eyes! A miracle! “Praise the Lord!” We were all breathing sighs of relief.

“What happened?” we called out to them, “What’s keeping you above the water?”

“A rock!” came their reply, “But please hurry and get us! The current is pretty strong and makes us lose our balance easily. This rock is barely big enough for us. We don’t want to slip off because we might not be able to get back on.”

None of us were strong enough swimmers to go out and get them, neither did we have any life jackets, ropes, or anything we could throw out to them! My oldest brother, Jamin, soon found a part of a log but we really needed some rope to tie onto it. “Get the twine from the victory tent!” I yelled to no one in particular. When Daddy came back with the twine, we tied one end of it around the log. Thomas held the other end but it was too short to reach them, even when he stood in deep water. “Now what should we do?” we wondered.

Just then a man showed up with a rope. Just the thing we needed! Quickly he tore open the package and began unwinding the rope. Hope was beginning to rise, but I still felt a little dubious.

“Are you a good swimmer?” I asked the man.

“Yeah,” he answered briefly.

“Good. Praise the Lord!” Relief swept over me.

He plunged into the water and with smooth, powerful, strokes he swam for the rescue. The rest of his family arrived a little bit later with life jackets and other floating devices.

While the rest of us watched anxiously as they were all brought back to shore—alive—we were thanking the Lord for His faithfulness to help us in every way we needed. Joel, who was still strong enough to swim on his own, swam back to shore beside his wife, as Kayla was towed carefully across the water on her back. Timothy, nearly limp and somewhat delirious, hung onto the log for his ride back to the shore. Once back on the shore we hugged them and thanked God for sparing their lives. “Ah, it feels so good to be standing on solid ground!” Joel commented.

Soon we were all telling our stories. Most of all, we were curious to know why they didn’t drown. “What happened was,” Joel began, “I had to bob under water until I could touch the bottom. Then I would push Kayla and Timothy up towards the surface so they could get a breath. Once I did that I’d go up for some air and repeat the process. I probably did that three of four times but I couldn’t have done that much longer—I was getting very exhausted. But then we ran into that rock on our way downstream. The Lord had that rock there just for us! And it was barely big enough for us, too!”

“And who got that family to help us?” was the next question.

“Susanna did,” Mama answered for my older sister.

“They were the only other campers in this entire campground,” Susanna put in, “and they had everything we needed: the ability to swim really well, life jackets, ropes, etc.”

The Lord provided them just for us! They were there at just the right time with just the right things!

Joel added one more blessing: “I’m thankful for every inch of my height that the Lord has given me.”

“Yes,” we all agreed, “the Lord is so good to us, we have lots to be thankful for.”

—Clarissa Scofield

“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thy own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths.”* (Proverbs 3:5-6)