A Story That Has Stirred My Soul

This story of Ernest Gordon has stirred me soul.  Thank You Father for Your Spirit’s whisper leading me to reread Philip Yancey’s; Rumors of Another World before giving it away with my hoard of stored library. I want to journal it, so as to easily reference it in the days to come when needing the same grace given and found by Ernest Gordon.  Grace doesn't seem to be a widely held commodity in these days of super-spiritualism. 

Gordon served as a captain in the British army during the Second World War when he was captured by the Japanese, marched with other prisoners into the Southeast Asian jungles, and forced in constructing a railroad bridge over the river Kwai.  The conditions of the prison camp which is said to have claim the lives of 80,000 men.

The prisoners were made to work for hours in scorching temperatures, chopping their way through tangled jungles.  Those who paused out of exhaustion were beaten to death by the guards.  Treated like animals, the men themselves became like beasts trying to survive.  Theft and betrayal were as rampant as hunger and disease among those captives.  Captive and captor both experienced their lives meeting with indifference, deceit, and hatred. 

Yet, Gordon lived to tell of hope and transformation in the valley of the river Kwai.  Yancy quotes Gordon giving a first hand account t of the story behind the "death railroad" and the spiritual resurrection of the camp.  "Death was still with us," writes Gordon.  "But we were slowly being freed from its destructive grip.  We were seeing for ourselves the sharp contrast between the forces that made for life and those that made for death.  Selfishness, hatred, envy, jealousy, greed, self-indulgence, laziness and pride were all anti-life.  Love, heroism, self-sacrifice, sympathy, mercy, integrity and creative faith, on the other hand, were the essence of life, turning mere existence into living in its truest sense.  These were the gifts of God to men.  True, there was hatred.  But there was also love.  There was death.  But there was also life.  God had not left us.  He was with us, calling us to live the divine life in fellowship." In the valley of the shadow of death, Christ had risen.

God had somehow reconciled their lifeless estates, and in such a way that they found themselves unable to respond to others without a similar inexplicable grace.  In fact, so complete was the transformation of the men, so real the presence of Christ among them; that they were able to reach out even to their captors with the love that had taken hold of them.

While still in the hands of their enemies, a train carrying Gordon and several others came alongside another boxcar at a stop in Burma.  The entire car was filled with gravely wounded Japanese soldiers.  They were left alone, without medical attention or company, as if abandoned refuse of war.  In Gordon’s book: Miracle on the River Kwai, he recalls: "They were in a shocking state." "The wounded looked at us forlornly as they sat with their heads resting against the carriages waiting fatalistically for death....These were our enemy."

Without a word, many of the officers unbuckled their packs, took out part of their rations and a few rags, and with their canteens went over to the Japanese train.  The guards tried to prevent them, but they pressed through, kneeling by the side of the injured men with food and water, cleaning their wounds. Eighteen months earlier the same men of the river Kwai prison camp would have celebrated the humiliation and destruction of anyone on the side of their violent captors.  Yet Gordon explains, "We had experienced a moment of grace, there in the bloodstained railway cars.  God had broken through the barriers of our prejudice and had given us the will to obey his command, 'Thou shalt love.'"

Ernest Gordon left his three years of brutal imprisonment with an unexpected turn in his own story.  Among suffering and enemies, God had spoken.  Now it was Gordon who could not remain silent.  He returned to Scotland to attend seminary, eventually becoming the dean of the chapel of Princeton University where he remained until his death in 2002.  Among a valley of dry bones, God had breathed men to life.  In the trenches of despair and hatred, the inexplicable love of Christ called enemies—and humankind—to hope and forgiveness.