A ‘miracle’ Bible

I read a newspaper story of a Bible that brought together two families from opposite ends of the world after 75 years. Here’s my ‘miracle bible’ story…

I watched a ‘sequel’ to Chariots of Fire, entitled On Eagles’ Wings, recently. I’m sorry to say it was a disappointment with only glimpses of the spiritual foundations to Eric Liddell’s extraordinary life.

I met two children from his Internment Camp Sunday School Class; which, incidentally, gets no mention in ‘On Eagles’ Wings’. They were elderly ladies by the time I met him. They had been in the Japanese Internment Camp in China as their parents were Missionaries in China when the Japanese Imperial Forces invaded China.

I met the first lady at her son’s engagement party. I was working for an International Bank in London and he had been transferred from an appointment in the Far East. He was a lawyer and Andrew -, became my line-manager. Getting to know each other he asked what I had done previous to my current role. I told him that for most of the previous 30 years I had been a pastor and Bible-teacher; he raised his eyebrows and asked what ‘brand’ of Christianity I came from. I said ‘conservative evangelical’. He smiled and said, “My parents are at All Nations Christian College as tutors. Knowing his surname I named his father, Martin-, a well-known speaker and writer of books and a missionary strategist.

We got on well together and I was invited to his engagement party where I met the missionary couple. Martin and Elizabeth- . Elizabeth was one of Eric Liddell’s Sunday School Class in the Internment Camp. They were third generation missionaries and we chatted for a while. Andrew and I got on well and we had some good chats on deep topics. When I left the bank I never expected to see him or his parents again and I didn’t.

Meanwhile I met the other ‘child’. She was a member of a church in Exeter that I visited from time to time to preach. Chatting to her one day I discovered that she had also been in Eric Liddell’s Sunday School Class and remembered Elizabeth- well. We went our separate ways.

A couple of years later I had a letter from her. She wanted to send me a Chinese Bible that had belonged to Elizabeth’s grandmother, also a missionary to China. I contacted Andrew and sent the Bible to Elizabeth. She was amazed and thrilled. Where had it been? Where did it come from? How did I get hold of it? I had no idea of the answers to most of these questions.

But it had arrived in Elizabeth’s hands at a particular moment. She had just completed writing the biography of her grandmother… and then her grandmother’s Bible arrived in the post! I have never been able to trace the journey that the Bible made. It remains a mystery, but God never lost track of it for half a century, from China to Exeter to Reading … to the hands of a granddaughter. It’s often the little touches on a life that are the most fascinating. What stories we shall have to tell…

How many links did God have to synergise and synchronise to make this story possible?
Do I believe in providence?
Do I believe God works all things together for good for those who love him and are called according to his Purpose?
Do I believe His eye is on the sparrow?
I believe.