The Missing Shovel

"Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends."
John 15:13

Ernest Gordon was a British Army officer captured at sea by the Japanese at the age of twenty-four. Gordon was sent to work on the Burma-Siam railway line that the Japanese were constructing though the dense Thai jungle in preparation for invading India.

Thousands of prisoners struggled in 120-degree heat, bare bodies and feet attacked by insects and cut by rocks. But that was nowhere the worst of it. Many dropped dead of exhaustion, malnutrition, and disease. If any appeared to be lagging, a Japanese guard would murder them on the spot. Under these terrible conditions, nearly 400 men died for every mile of track laid -- 80,000 in all.

Interaction among the prisoners had degenerated into barbarous behavior, each man for himself. Then one day a shovel went missing.

Japanese guards carefully counted tools at the end of day’s work, and one day the guard shouted one was missing. Demanding who had stolen it, he screamed “All die! All die!” and raised his rifle to fire at the lineup. At that instant a man stepped forward, stood at attention, and said, “I did it.”

The guard killed him immediately, and his fellows collected his corpse. That evening, when the tools were counted again, the work crew discovered there had been a miscount earlier; no shovel was missing.

The word spread like wildfire through the whole camp. An innocent man had been willing to die to save the others! The incident had a profound effect. The men began to treat each other like brothers and look out for one another.

When the victorious Allies swept in, the survivors, human skeletons, lined up in front of their captors … (and instead of attacking their captors) insisted: ‘No more hatred. No more killing. Now what we need is forgiveness.’”

The sacrifice of this one man penetrated the hearts of these prisoners, whose attitudes began to change in the camp. They began treating the dead with respect and gave them proper burials and funerals. Without prompting, prisoners began to look out for one another, which allowed for Ernest Gordon to live and witness one of the most amazing transformations. Gordon would soon recover from his injury and sickness from the care of the people in the camp. This new spirit continued to spread Gordon writes:

Death was still with us-no doubt about that. But we were slowly being freed from its destructive grip. We were seeing for ourselves the sharp contrast between the forces that made for life and those that made for death. Selfishness, hatred, envy, jealous, greed, self-indulgence, laziness and pride were all anti-life. Love, heroism, self sacrifice, sympathy, mercy, integrity and creative faith on the other hand, were the essence of life, turning mere existence into living in its trust sense These were the gifts of God to men….True there was hatred, but there was also love. There was death, but there was also life. God had not left us. He was with us calling us to live the divine life in fellowship.

Sacrificial love has transforming power. (Gordon tells the full story in his book, Miracle on the River Kwai.)”

Dear Lord, we praise and thank You for Your matchless love and Your sacrifice on the Cross for our sins. Give us the wisdom to share that great news with those who cross our path today. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.