God Gives More Grace To The Simple (Part 2)
What happens when an inexperienced country boy fails to plan and decides to attend a Youth for Christ meeting in an unfamiliar city? I can tell you it was only by the grace of God that I ever found the place.
Remember these were the days before cellphones and computers, and so I, without a plan or directions set on my quest never even considering the likelihood of failure. But let me start from the beginning.
Before getting my orders for Pearl Harbor, I had been stationed in San Diego. While there I had been spending my off-duty weekends with the Navigators. When they heard I was being transferred to Hawaii, they advised me that Youth for Christ held meetings in Honolulu on Saturday nights.
That’s all I knew. I didn’t even know that Honolulu was a very large, modern city. I had no idea how to find the meeting place, but I caught a bus at the main gate along with a lot of other sailors going to town to do what sailors do on a Saturday night. After a while the bus stopped, and most of the sailors got off, so I got off, too. It didn’t take long for even a naïve country boy to realize that this was a good place to get a tattoo, or to get your fortune read, or to get drunk, or to find a woman companion, but not a good place to find a Youth for Christ meeting.
Obviously, I was in the wrong section of town, so I began my search, walking down one street and up another. After a little while I found myself walking on a main street. Looking ahead, I saw a man carrying something that I thought might be a Bible. I began following him, hoping he was going to the Youth for Christ meeting, too. But as I got closer, I could see it was only a package and not a Bible after all.
It was at about that time that he turned right and crossed the street. Obviously, there was no reason to follow a man carrying a package and expecting him to lead me to my destination, so I crossed the street and there it was right in front of me – the Salvation Army Citadel where the Youth for Christ meeting was being held.
That’s what happened to me, when I, an inexperienced country boy who failed to plan, was led to the Youth for Christ meeting by a man carrying a package. But you know, of course, that it was really God’s grace that guided me to that meeting.
– Lee Swift
