[Continued from Part I. Click here to read.]
When the last lifeboats were launched from the Dorchester, the chaplains prayed with the soldiers who couldn’t escape the sinking ship.
27 minutes after the torpedo struck the Dorchester, it disappeared below the waves with 672 men still aboard. The last anyone saw of the chaplains, they were standing on the deck, arms linked and praying together.
One survivor recalled what he saw from the water: “The last thing I saw, the four chaplains were up there praying for the safety of the men. They had done everything they could. I did not see them again. They themselves did not have a chance without their life jackets.”
Of the 940 men aboard the Dorchester, only 230 survived. Many of those who did, and specifically four owed their lives to the clergymen who were found to be adequate for the task.
The dictionary defines adequate as: as much or as good as necessary for some requirement or purpose; fully sufficient, suitable, or fit. Synonym: sufficient.
Did God make Clark adequate? Sufficient?
Absolutely! Chaplain Poling was adequate because God made him so. Poling selflessly gave so another could live.
The Apostle Paul wrote about sufficiency. He said, “I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.” [Philippians 1:20]
What would it look like for you to be more sufficient?
What about us as a church?
We don’t have to be at war on sinking ship to experience that kind of adequacy, but we do need to have as Paul said “sufficient courage”…to live well in every circumstance so that Christ is exalted in our bodies…by life or death.
What is adequate…fully sufficient…in your life? What isn’t?
Take a few moments right now and talk to God about what areas of your life are adequate and which are not.
Then ask him to make your life adequate instead of safe.
But [the Lord] said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. – Apostle Paul, 2 Corinthians 12:9
[Source of pictures & facts: Wikipedia]
