Article November 23, 2009 Issue

MY WAY HOME

A retired Marine officer tells how Scriptural inspiration helped him out of a jam at a military airport.

BY KEITH SIMON

"'Before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear,'" said the pastor, quoting from Isaiah (65:24). I was listening to the Bible Hour program on a small Christian radio station as my car sped down the highway. As a reserve officer in the United States Marine Corps, I was traveling across Georgia and South Carolina on my way to a base in North Carolina.

I spent many a lonely night on the road as an officer, and I always loved listening to Bible-based radio. I remember well a pastor's powerful voice filling my car with passages from the Bible—passages that he referred to as "spiritual ammunition."

Ammunition was certainly a word I could relate to as an artillery officer. Marines are taught that when their life is on the line, ammunition is one of the essential supplies to have. And as a Christian Scientist, I found it no less critical to stock up on the spiritual ammunition found in the Scriptures. The Bible gives not only words of comfort, but words of power—divine power, backed up and enforced by spiritual law.