Credit where it's due ...

The  survival of the El Salvadoran, who drifted across the Pacific to the Marshall Islands, was greeted with incredulity and amazement. Many doubted it happened. A Mexican official deemed it nigh impossible and speculated whether it was connected to the national problem of drugs!

Experts stepped in and credited the Pacific currents, his ability to eat anything and his sea savvy.  An oceanographer, Eric Van Sebille, said that he was incredibly lucky to come ashore on the remote atoll of Ebon in the Marshall Islands.  The current could have swept him on toward the Phillipines and then back into the Pacific garbage patch where he would remain forever - going around and around.

So was it sea savvy, luck  - or something greater?  A miracle and the Hand of God?  

Coastal fishermen say that they are in the hands of God when they go to sea. Jose Salvador Alvarenga says that his strong faith helped him keep up hope.  He prayed.  And his mother prayed to Jesus for a son she had not seen for 8 years.  For them their prayers were answered!  So. let's give some credit where it is due!  

There were the currents, the ability to stomach a strange diet, sea savvy and that bit of luck that can be called the Hand of God.  These days, we don't have enough miracles or maybe we just miss them because we are blind. Faith among seafarers goes back over centuries!

The old hymn, Abide With Me implores: Hear us when we cry to thee for those in peril on the sea.
And Jonah from inside the whale said “I called out to the LORD, out of my distress, and he answered me;"