Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!
Ecclesiastes 4:9&10
William Nesbitt was a navy doctor in WWII, assigned to the 7th Naval Beach Battalion that landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. He shares a “foxhole” story for our edification:
Word reached me that Mike, our senior medical officer, was missing in action. His ship had been sunk by an artillery shell. Two days later he appeared in our bivouac area. He had been rescued from the water and taken back to England. Finding him uninjured and fit for duty, the Navy sent him back to his battalion on Omaha Beach.
“Bill, do you mind if I stay with you in your foxhole?” he said. “I know you trust God to take care of you, and I would like to share in that protection.”
“Sure thing! Just help me enlarge it some.”
We made the foxhole wider and deeper, covered it with driftwood and topped it with a thick layer of sand. We had little trouble from the enemy planes during the day, but every night they strafed the beach. Mike and I stretched out in our foxhole, read the Bible by flashlight and prayed—not in fear, but rejoicing in the nearness of God. Above us we heard the thud of bullets in the sand, and at the entrance of our abode we saw the blue flashes from the muzzle of the plane’s machine guns, but we had taken our refuge in God.
This story illustrates the beauty and benefit of loyalty—the tie that binds. I want to be a friend who sticks it out—and I am looking for a few loyal friends in return. As the old saying goes, to have a friend, be a friend. Am I remaining in the “foxhole” with faithful friends?
*Excerpt from In the Shelter of the Most High by William R. Nesbitt, Jr., Focus on the Family, November 1999.