Bomb With Father’s Name

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are Mine.” [Isaiah 43:1]

During the Second World War, a couple of young American GI’s, stationed in Australia, were driving their jeep along an airfield when a Japanese squadron came over intent on bombing everything around the military target. Hearing the planes approach, the young airmen jumped out of their jeep, and dove for cover into a nearby ditch. Within seconds, one of the Japanese planes dropped a bomb that made a direct hit and destroyed the Jeep they were driving.

After the attack was over, the two young men crawled out of the ditch, shaken but unharmed, and walked over to inspect the damage. Poking around the smoldering Jeep, they found a large piece of shrapnel from the bomb wedged into the seat where the driver had been sitting. Picking it up, they saw clearly stenciled on the metal shard the name “Ray Ewing.” The GI who had been driving the Jeep gave a gasp of astonishment. His name was Curtis Ewing, and his father’s name was Ray Ewing. How did that piece of bomb shrapnel with his father’s name get there?

Before the war, Ray Ewing sold his old Plymouth as scrap. He previously had stenciled his name on the engine block. The car, like other steel and iron junk discarded by Americans, found its way to Japan, a major market for old metal at the time. After the war began, all this steel went into weapons. The shrapnel that struck his seat evidently came from the Plymouth and literally had his father’s name on it!

The Bible speaks of God’s people having the Heavenly Father’s name on them – obviously not in the form of a destructive bomb, but as a seal of His love and protection. John writes about this when he says, “Then I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God. And he cried with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea, saying, ‘Do not harm the earth, the sea, or the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads’” (Revelation 7:2,3). The devil has a bomb with your name on it to destroy you. But God wants to mark you with His name and save you forever.