What difference can one life make? John
Howland was one of 100 people who made it to the New World on the Mayflower,
arriving in November, 1620. But Howland almost didn’t make it. An indentured
servant, he was working topside when a swell pitched the ship and Howland fell
overboard. He managed to grab a line dragging in the water and barely made it
to safety.
After surviving the winter that
killed half the Mayflower passengers including John Carver to whom he was
indentured, John Howland married Carver’s ward, Elizabeth Tilley. They were
blessed with 10 children and 77 grandchildren.
Today their descendants number over
one million and include such individuals as poets Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow, painter Amy Otis, actors Anthony Perkins, Maude Adams and
Humphrey Bogart, and two presidents, George H.W. Bush and his son George W.
Bush.
What if John Howland had drowned
instead of being rescued? Or if he and his future wife hadn’t survived that
first winter? Truly, one life can make a very big difference for the future of
a people.
We can also say the same of Jesus. What if He hadn’t risen again, or what if He hadn’t lived at all? What then would be the state of the entire world? But God in His mercy planned that
Jesus would be born as a human being and would be the source of blessing for people
of all time.
“When the fullness of time had come, God sent
forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem
those who were under the law, so that we might be adopted as His children.”
(Galatians 4:4-5)
One Person
can change the course of the whole human race.
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Rev. Bob Tasler,
www.bobtasler.com
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