
A university professor was asked to
speak at a military base one December, and a soldier named Ralph was sent to
pick him up at the airport. After they had introduced themselves, they headed
toward the baggage claim.
As they walked down the concourse,
Ralph kept disappearing. Once he stopped to help an older woman whose suitcase
had fallen open. Then he stopped to lift two toddlers up to where they could
see Santa Claus. He paused again to give directions to someone who was lost.
Each time he came back with a big smile on his face.
“Where did you learn to do that?”
the professor asked.
“Do what?” Ralph said.
“Where did you learn to live like
that? You have stopped to help three people with their problems, and to be
honest, I didn’t even SEE them!”
“Oh,” Ralph said, “I learned that
during the war, I guess.”
Then he told the professor about his
tour of duty in Vietnam, about how he served with a mine detection unit whose
job it was to clear territory of mines left by the Viet Cong. He spoke of how
he had witnessed some of his buddies blown apart or maimed for life.
“I learned to live between the
steps,” he said. “I never knew whether the next one would be my last, so I
learned to get everything I could out of the moment between when I picked up my
foot and when I put it back down again. Every step I took was a whole new
world, and I guess I’ve just been that way ever since.”
The abundance of our lives is not
determined by how long we live, but how well we live. Those who can say, “It is
well with my soul” know what I mean. God created us for fellowship with Him, to
enjoy Him and all He created between the steps, even when life deals us a
bitter blow. The great hymn of faith, “It is Well With My Soul,” was written by
Horatio Spafford in 1873 after Spafford learned that the ship that his wife and
four young daughters were on had sunk in the Atlantic, and his daughters had
perished. As he sailed from America to England to join his wife, and his ship
arrived at the very spot where his daughters and 220 others had died at sea, he
looked at the waters, and went to his cabin to pen these words:
“When peace, like a river, attendeth
my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me
to say,
It is well, it is well with my
soul.”
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