Saved By Hope

SAVED BY HOPE

An interesting item appeared in a Nashville newspaper, datelined Memphis (UPI): A woman named Hope pulled a man from chilly harbor waters after watching him drive his car off the bank in an apparent suicide attempt.

Hope Phillips, thirty-eight, said Monday she was sitting in her car with her husband and son Sunday afternoon when she saw the man drive down Riverside Drive into Wolf River Harbor.

Phillips said she saw the man climb on top of the sinking car. "His face was like, 'I'm so desperate, please help me.' All I could do was run into the water," she said.

Phillips said she swam toward the man, who was about twenty-five feet off the bank, and used a tree branch to pull him toward the bank. Her husband helped drag him out of the water. The man said he was a student at the University of Tennessee.

She said: "He kept telling us he wasn't worth anything. I said, 'You are worth something, you're here, aren't you?'

"Then he asked my name. I said 'Hope' and he said, 'What's your name?' He repeated it twice. He had a smile on his face. You knew he didn't want to die."

The police took the man to the Regional Medical Center.

Our hope in God is because of the God of hope. Picture yourself drowning in the sea of sin; going under in an ocean of regret; sinking swiftly in the deep waters of guilt. What does God do? He dives in to rescue us and give us hope. How can all this be?

(From a sermon by Donald McCulley, Got Hope? 12/21/2010)