Speaker: Darlene Sala | Series: Encouraging Words

I’m always fascinated to listen to people tell how God met them at their point of desperation. Take the Elegados, for instance. In his work for the copper and gold mines during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, Mr. Elegado had the only car allowed to go back and forth to the mines near Baguio.  In order to be permitted to pass check points he had to have a Japanese sticker on the car.

Eventually, however, he was arrested by the Japanese and taken to Manila to prison. For months his wife left their three children every weekend to search for her husband.  Being a nurse, she knew that if she did not find him he would die, for he could not survive indefinitely on the daily ration of one bowl of rice and a lump of sugar or salt.  Her heart cried out, “If there is a God–if You are really alive–help me.”

At the end of eight months of searching, she found him and began to bring

food to him.  God preserved his life through two more years of imprisonment in that dark place, and ever since that time she and her husband have been dedicated to doing all they can for the Lord, who literally gave them back their lives.

There is a postscript to the story.  The Japanese imprisonment, horrible as it was, saved Mr. Elegado’s life.  For immediately after he was arrested, the Filipino guerrillas came through the area to kill him. The sticker on his car to them meant cooperation with the enemy. But Mr. Elegado was safe in prison.

When we are in a very dark place, perhaps the darkness is only the shadow of God’s hand shielding us from greater danger. Psalm 91 says, “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge” (vss. 1 and 4).