A miracle in the North Atlantic on Christmas Eve 1941
A Norwegian sea captain

"I think I can say about myself," says a Norwegian sea captain, "that I am a sober man who is alien to all superstition and fanfare, but this experience has convinced me that there is more between heaven and earth than we humans understand.

During the last world war, when the Battle of the Atlantic was raging at its worst, I commanded a 9,000-ton piece boat, which brought food from America to the hard-fought England. We had made several trips when a couple of hundred miles northwest of Ireland we were hit by an enemy torpedo and sank. Of the crew of 36 men, half went down with the ship into the depths.

We had just experienced the most violent winter storm I had ever been exposed to in the North Atlantic. The sea was still high after the storm, but we still managed to put two lifeboats into the water. There were nine of us in mine, of whom several were badly wounded. The first officer's boat got away from us during the night. We didn't see it again.

To witness the boat you have been attached to with strong ties for many years disappearing into the sea is like standing on the edge of an open grave and watching your own child being sunk. And when you see the crew, with whom you have shared sorrows and joys for months and years, go down with the boat, it leaves a stinging wound in your soul that only time can slowly heal. I can never forget that day, it was 22-12-1941.

The first night in the lifeboat was one long nightmare. Every now and then we lit flares and hoped that help would come. The night was black without stars and it began to snow. A biting cold wind swept over the sea, and the lake was high with foamy white peaks. We were all freezing pretty badly and felt helpless and just waited for daylight to break through. When morning dawned, under the dark clouds, two of the wounded were dead. They lay huddled together in the bottom of the boat. Not a ship was anywhere to be seen. The unchanging loneliness of the sea surrounded us on all sides and gave us no comfort. The hours passed and the strength began to disappear from those of us who had survived the night. With great difficulty we lifted the dead onto the railing and quietly laid them overboard. I prayed an Our Father.

Among the wounded was the young man Kjell. He had his home in one of the small villages in Sörlandet. Most of the time he lay dormant with his head in my lap. Now and then he groaned weakly and asked for water. Once he got up halfway and stared out over the sea with feverish eyes and said: "I hear church bells, captain!"

Another night disappeared. A pitch-black eternity filled with pain, anguish and despair. It began to snow again and the wind cut through marrow and bone. That night we learned what cold is. Our clothes became stiff with frost on our bodies. The merciless cold of death wraps its icy mantle around both body and soul. It was as if one's beating heart was becoming stiff in the horror of death.

When the new day broke, the radio operator lay frozen to death and dead at the bottom of the lifeboat. He had taken off his shirt and put it over the thinly clad engine men who he thought needed it more than he did. The mate was still alive but breathing only weakly. It would soon be over. With faint wonder I thought that death never takes a day off, not even on Christmas Eve.

The hours dragged on. It must have been five o'clock when the mate opened his eyes and said: "Sing for me, Captain!" Singing in a lifeboat in the North Atlantic with the dead and dying around me and black, chasing clouds of wind above us. It was as if my voice were frozen to ice and my lips were cracked and dry. Perhaps I could not utter a single note. But the boy was on the threshold of death, I must help if I could.

What do you want me to sing to my boy?" I asked. He looked me straight in the eyes and answered without hesitation: "I am a sailor on the sea of ​​time!" I assure you, my friends, that I did not know this song. I had never heard it before, neither the lyrics nor the melody. Nevertheless, I opened my mouth and sang. Word followed word, verse after verse: "I am a sailor on the sea of ​​life, on the changing waves of time. The Lord Jesus gave me the course, and this course I want to follow."

It was as if someone else held an open book before my eyes, with both text and melody or like a film that flickered past. I felt that I had never sung better in my life. The voice came from within, yet it was not mine. I only formed the unknown words with my lips and sent them on.

While I sang, the wind died down and settled down. The clouds that had been chasing black and ominous over the sea for days dispersed over our heads and a heavenly, gentle light blazed down blessingly over us.

The young man lay still in my arms. Over the years it has fallen to my lot to see many men die, but never have I seen a more beautiful face in death. A small smile played around his mouth. One would think that he had been interrupted in a cheerful game. Joy shone from every feature of his face. Around us the sea had become still, the wind had become a faint whisper that only underlined the stillness. I felt the presence of the great God and the rustle of eternity's wings over the boat.

When the song was finally sung, I knew that the young man was dead. The sea rose again and howled again plaintively over the dead expanses of the sea. The young man received his Lord's Prayer like the others and was immersed in the depths of the sea. It was a strange experience that I will never forget.

This Christmas Eve was difficult and full of sadness, but now and then the wind lifted the clouds that had settled over the horizon and in the east I discovered a bright twinkling star. It was a Star of Bethlehem that wanted to lead us on the right path and I set a hopeful course after the star. About an hour later, four of us who survived were rescued by a British corvette. They had changed course when the lookout thought they had seen a distress flare at sea.

But the Norwegian sea captain paused for a moment and sat in deep thought. He continues: But there is more to this story. After the war, I sought out the young man's mother. She was a brave little woman who had probably noticed adversity and sorrow, but had not broken her. She had lost her husband in a tragic shipwreck only a year after the boy was born. Her face reflected that sorrowful calm that characterizes people who have been tried and refined in the hard school of life. I did not mention anything about the wonderful experience I had had in the lifeboat. But when she herself began to speak, I understood a few things that had been obscure to me all along. She recounted: "I had such anxiety over me the last few days before Christmas, the day the boy passed away. I felt he was in danger and couldn't sleep at night. When Christmas Eve came I threw myself into work to be ready for the holiday. But all the time I felt a worry weighing on my mind. It was snowing and blowing outside and the semi-darkness lay gloomy and oppressive over the small houses. When it was about three o'clock I sat down with the old guitar in my arms. There was something inside me that pressed on and wanted me to sing. I couldn't resist."

"What song were you singing?" I asked tensely, although I was quite sure of the answer. "I am a sailor on the sea of ​​time, on the changing waves of time," she answered, because my boy loved that song and had done so since he was little. We often sang it - both in sorrow and in joy. As I sang it again, I noticed that the dark clouds parted and the sun looked into my cabin and twinkled on the church spire directly across the street. It was like a greeting from my God. "Fear not, I am with you always, to the end of the world." I sang all the verses and as I sang I felt a great peace fill my troubled heart. My boy was dead, I knew that, but that he was well, I also felt that."

When I told her what I had experienced regarding her boy on Christmas Eve, she listened quietly without shedding a tear, but her face shone with an inner light as she thanked me. There is more between heaven and earth than we humans understand, so the confident sea captain's words sounded when he told of this event. God is a God of wonders, he intervenes wonderfully.