Faith and Hope in Extreme Situations

Over this month we have heard different sharings on the theme of faith and hope. I would like to contribute with a personal sharing of two quite extreme situations, one from 27 years ago and the other around 3 years ago. These were situations where great faith and hope were on display.

In 1994, a large ferry called the MS Estonia with nearly 1,000 people on board was travelling overnight from Tallin to Stockholm in the cold Baltic Sea. Halfway through the crossing it seemed to hit something and began to sink. It was a modern-day Titanic and the number of people who died that night was tragically high – 852 people perished at sea. There were some survivors and I followed the only British survivor, Paul Barney, who managed to stay out of the freezing waters on an upturned lifeboat. He knew that if he fell in the water he would be dead in minutes due to the cold. I remember from his recollection of the 5-hour wait to be rescued, that, with hypothermia caused by the extreme cold, he just wanted to sleep, but he understood that if he did, he would not wake up again. He was eventually rescued, with others, by the Finnish coastguard in a helicopter.

This survivor had an extraordinary will to live, but he also had hope that rescue would come and the faith that once on the helicopter, that he would live.

A more recent incident that I hope you remember was the story about the young Thai football team and their coach being trapped by unexpected foods in the cave complex in Northern Thailand. We heard that the group had gone missing and it seemed a hopeless situation. But there were expert cave divers from Europe who came to help in the search. While the boys waited in the dark deep in the flooded caves, the divers methodically searched for them, surfacing in different air pockets and listening and even smelling for their presence. Their perseverance paid off and they were all found alive and in good spirits. For me the most extraordinary aspect was that the boys were sedated during their removal from the cave system – so they were asleep as they were taken out underwater in the flooded cave. Each extraction took 5-6 hours but they were all saved.

This is another case of hope from both sides – from the search team hoping they will find the football team alive, and from the football team themselves hoping they will be found. Also, there must have been incredible faith in the experts to choose sedation over potential panic of the children.

So how do these incidents relate to you?

Well, in both cases there were challenges to overcome, and reliance on others and on themselves. I know you are all taking exams now – this is a challenge. Maybe you want to improve your life in some way – this is also a challenge.

In fact, life is full of challenges we need to face. With small challenges, significant challenges like exams, and especially life-or-death challenges, you always need faith in what matters to you – it could be faith in yourself, faith in the people around you, and faith in God. Only then can you overcome the different challenges that you face. With an outlook for a better future, we can all hope that our challenges can be overcome and better days lie ahead.

The spirit of the survivor from the ferry disaster, the cave rescuers and the young football team has stayed with me for years and I hope that you can take a little of their spirit with you for all your own challenges.

Mr. John Guest