Stewardship - Part 3

I’d like to tell you the story of Roger Woodward, a seven year old boy whose life was changed forever on a hot summer day in 1960. The Woodward family had recently moved to Niagara Falls, NY, where Frank Woodward was a laborer on the Robert Moses Powerplant—a great hydro-electric project that was under construction at the time.

On that particular Saturday afternoon 38 years ago, a friend of the Woodwards named Jim Honeycutt dropped by their home and offered to take the family for a boat ride on the Niagara River. Frank and his wife had other plans, but Roger and his 17 year old sister Deanne eagerly accepted.

As they were leaving the house, Frank called out to his son “Remember to wear your lifejacket.” because Roger was just learning how to swim.

Jim Honeycutt was an experienced boatman and a strong swimmer. He had had six years’ experience as a lifeguard in North Carolina and had done considerable boating on the upper Niagara River south of Grand Island. He owned a twelve foot aluminum boat which was powered by a 7.5 horsepower Evinrude outboard.

So it was that Jim and the kids set out from Grand Island to explore the river. It was a blistering hot July day, and Roger wanted to take off his life jacket. But Honeycutt, remembering Frank Woodward’s instructions to his son, insisted that he keep it on.

Together they spent an hour enjoying the water and the scenery, working their way downstream. Little did they realize that a terrifying and life-changing experience was about to happen to them.

To this day, no one knows why Jim Honeycutt decided to take his boat under the Grand Island bridge and into the strange and turbulent waters below. That remains a mystery. Perhaps it was carelessness, or perhaps he wanted to give the children the thrill of their lives. But for whatever reason, it was a fateful decision.

Young Roger asked permission to steer the boat as they passed under the bridge. In the distance, he could see a pillar of mist rising from the water. The boy had absolutely no idea that that pillar of mist marked the crest of the mighty Niagara Falls. To a seven year old, having just recently moved into the area with his family, the Niagara was just another river. He had no idea that it led to the Falls.

On the American side, Roger spotted a small island, no more than a shoal. It was covered with roosting birds. Roger turned the boat towards it to get a better look. But as they approached the shoal, there was a thud, and suddenly the noise of the motor changed to a high-pitched squeal. The propeller had struck the shoal, the shear pin was gone, and they had no power.

Jim Honeycutt immediately sprang into action. He jumped to the rear of the boat, hauled the engine out of the water, and ordered Deanne to put on the only other life jacket in the boat. Then, seizing a pair of oars, he began to pull frantically for the American shore.

“What’s the matter?” Deanne asked with fear rising in her voice. But Honeycutt didn’t answer. In spite of his frantic efforts at the oars, the strong current sucked the boat downstream. Moments later they were in the rapids on the Canadian side. The current rapidly increased in speed. Soon Goat Island was flashing past. The children began to panic. “We’re going to die!” cried Roger. “I don’t know how to swim.”

“Don’t be scared,” said Honeycutt. “I’ll hold onto you.”

The boat struck a gigantic wave and almost capsized. It struck a second wave, and all three passengers were hurled into the foaming water. Deanne tried vainly to cling to the overturned boat. Honeycutt did his best to hold on to Roger, but the raging water tore them apart.

The boy was terrified. The whole world seemed to have exploded around him. The force of the water threw him against the rocks that protruded from the channel, bruising him badly. Then his terror shifted to anger. He could see people running frantically up and down the Goat Island shoreline, pointing at them and shouting. But he couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t come out and pull him from the water.

But his anger quickly vanished, and young Roger found himself at peace. He sensed now that he was going to die. And sure enough, a moment later, still wearing his life jacket, Roger Woodward hurtled over the lip of the Horseshoe Falls.

Meanwhile, his sister Deanne had lost her grip on the overturned boat. Although she was a weak swimmer, she struck out alone for Goat Island.

A man named John R. Hayes, who was a bus driver from New Jersey, happened to be standing on Goat Island near the tip of Terrapin Point. Hayes was with his wife and some others when he spotted three black objects bobbing in the white water above the Falls.

“It’s only some pieces of wood,” one of his companions said.

“Like hell, it’s wood,” cried Hayes. A moment later, to his horror, he saw the overturned boat swept over the Falls, followed by two human beings.

A shout went up: “There’s a girl in the water. Someone help. For God’s sake, someone help!”

Hayes, as a bus driver, had been trained how to respond in emergencies. He spotted Deanne in her red life jacket about to be swept over the brink a few feet from the Goat Island shore. He dropped the camera he was carrying and made a dash for the ledge. He climbed over the aluminum guard rail and teetered on the eighteen-inch lip of the bank, just a few feet above the raging torrent.

Deanne was thrashing in the water. “Somebody help me! Help my brother!” she cried out weakly.

Hooking one leg over the railing and arching his body as far as he could, Hayes commanded girl to kick her legs. “Kick harder!” he shouted. Deanne was about to give up, but the sound of his voice compelled her to fight. “Swim for your life, girl,” called Hayes. “Don’t stop.” As Hayes reached out for her with every ounce of strength, she just managed to seize his thumb and two fingers. That was her only lifeline. At this point she was no more than fifteen feet from the brink of the abyss.

The force of the raging water was so strong that Hayes could not haul Deanne to safety. He called for help, but the people in the crowd, who were watching from behind the railing, were stunned by the spectacle and seemed paralyzed.

A short distance away, a Pennsylvania sheet-metal worker saw the predicament and sprang into action. His name was John Quatrocchi. He was a veteran of five European campaigns in the Second World War. He had faced many life-threatening situations and knew what to do in the face of danger.

Quatrocchi had a camera in his hand and his five-year-old son in his arms. He quickly handed the boy to his wife, dropped his camera, and raced for the railing. He bumped his head as he tried to squeeze underneath. So he stood back, leaped over the barrier, and clinging to the bank precariously, he helped John Hayes pull Deanne to safety.

When she collapsed exhausted on shore, she cried out “My brother! What’s happened to my brother?”

“Pray for him.” Quatrocchi said gently. And so, soaking wet and with tears streaming from her eyes, Deanne struggled to her knees and prayed.

In the roaring vortex below Goat Island, where Deanne knelt in anguished prayer, Capt. Clifford Keech, was at the helm of the Maid of the Mist. He manoeuvred his famous vessel to within two hundred feet of the base of the Horseshoe Falls. It was as close as he ever dared go. He was just about to turn the boat away when he heard someone cry out, “Man overboard!”

Capt. Keech spotted a little boy in a red life jacket bobbing in the foam about fifty feet away. A crew member threw out a life ring but it fell short. Another followed; it fell short, too. Finally, Keech turned the Maid of the Mist in a large circle so that the rope could swing around the boy’s body.

Sputtering and gagging in the foam, Roger Woodward flung himself over the life ring in a belly flop. “My sister!” he cried out. “Where’s my sister?” On the observation point above, John Quatrocchi saw the rescue and told Deanne that her prayers for her brother had been answered.

Roger Woodward was hauled aboard the Maid of the Mist in his shorts, sneakers, and life jacket. He was bruised and sore, but otherwise okay.

To everyone’s astonishment, the first thing he did was ask for a glass of water. He said that the Niagara River tasted funny and he wanted to get the taste out of his mouth. Roger was taken to a hospital on the Canadian side, where he made a quick recovery, as did his sister in a hospital on the American side. Jim Honeycutt’s body was recovered downstream four days later.

For the next twenty years Roger Woodward kept asking himself why he and his sister had been spared from almost certain death. “You know,” people would say to him, “somebody must be watching over you; somebody has something special planned for your life.”

The family moved to Florida. Roger studied music and education at the University of Mississippi. He spent four years in the navy and then became a sales manager for a business-machine firm in Orlando. He married, and made two trips back to Niagara Falls to show his children where he had almost died.

But during all those years, Roger Woodward continued to question his existence. Where had he come from? Why was he here? Where was he going? He had even gone to see the navy chaplain while in the service to ask those questions. But the answers he got were unsatisfactory.

In 1980 a close friend invited Roger to attend a service at an evangelical church. Years before, Roger had heard the Gospel through his friendship with Ross Finch, a member of the Billy Graham evangelistic team. But it wasn’t until that day in 1980 when he bowed his head in prayer and heard the pastor say, “There is someone here who is lost today,” that Roger Woodward knew that his questions would finally be answered. Seated in his pew, he prayed a simple prayer and invited Jesus Christ to be his Saviour.

Ten years later, in 1990, on the thirtieth anniversary of his miraculous escape from certain death—the only human being ever to go over Niagara Falls without any protection and live—Roger Woodward returned again to Niagara Falls. But this time he went to preach in the Glendale Alliance Church.

And in his sermon, as he related the story of his conversion, he said “For the first time in my life I knew why I was here. Something happened thirty years ago that was very, very special. I lived. Why? So that I could live again, and so that others, too, might come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and have the gift of eternal life.”

I tell you that story to tell you that all of us, like Roger Woodward, are here for a reason. To be sure, not many of us could tell a story of deliverance to match his. But even so, whatever our experiences may have been, our lives are not meaningless. Every one of us is significant. But we can only realize that significance when we understand that we are accountable to God for our lives. We are stewards. We are stewards of life itself.

Life is a gift from God and he wants us to use it for Him. We’re not here on planet earth to serve ourselves—we’re here to serve Him, the One who put us here.

Several years ago, Bob Dylan wrote a song called “You Gotta Serve Somebody.” And the only question is: Who are you going to serve?

Matthew 6:24 says “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”

Who are you serving today? Are you serving yourself? Are you serving money? Are you serving that elusive search for fun, or happiness, or pleasure? Are you serving some substance or some behavior to which you may be addicted?

Or are you serving the living God? We will never understand the matter of stewardship—we will never really get that issue straight in our lives—unless we see ourselves first and foremost as servants of the Most High God.

Think about the characteristics of a servant:

1. A servant is available. He is always “on call”. Some of you have jobs in which you are “on call” and when that pager beeps or that phone rings, there is no question in your mind as to what you are going to do. You are going to answer the call.

Is that how it is between you and Jesus Christ? When Jesus calls, are you going to answer? Are you available to him to do His work? Or is your life so cluttered up with your own priorities and activities—things which are really going to amount to nothing of eternal value—that you cannot answer Him when He calls. Or you say, “Later, Lord. Not right now. Wait’ll it’s more convenient.”

Are you available?

2. Useable. A servant may be available, but if he isn’t useable—if he doesn’t have the qualities and abilities that his master needs—he’s not much good.

What are the qualities that Jesus needs us to have in order to be useable? Well, they aren’t complicated. In fact, I think we can boil them down to just two…

Faith

Purity of heart

Jesus said: “if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Do you have faith in the Lord’s power to use you this morning?

“Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart” (Psalm 24)

How do you get a pure heart? By seeking God’s face. By desiring fellowship with him more than anything else in the world. This is what purifies our hearts. Because when we come into God’s presence, he deals with our sin.

Remember Isaiah came into the presence of the Lord. He saw the angels crying “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

And in the midst of this awesome vision of God’s holiness, as he stood in the presence of God, Isaiah understood his own sinfulness. And he cried out “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

What did God do for Isaiah? One of the angels flew to him with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched Isaiah’s mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

Then Isaiah heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And Isaiah said, “Here am I. Send me!”

You can’t be useable unless you’re clean. And you can’t be clean unless the Lord makes you clean. And you can’t be made clean unless you come into the presence of the Lord aware of your own sinfulness and ready to have him do something about it.

Having a pure heart doesn’t mean that you never sin. It means that you take your sin to the Cross and let God cleanse you there.

3. A servant must not only be available and useable, but also teachable.

Are you listening to the lessons that God has for you today? Are you paying attention in the classroom of life? Are you searching the Scriptures for the training and instruction you need?

God cannot use us unless He can teach us. And He cannot teach us unless we have a heart to learn.

What do you make of the painful experiences that come into your life? Are they there just to bother you, to distract you, to tear you down? Or are they there to teach you something that God wants you to learn? In His sovereignty, He allows pain into our lives in order to teach us about Himself, about His provision, and about ourselves and our own inadequacy.

Are you listening to the lesson? Are you teachable?

Are you a faithful steward?

It seems to me that Roger Woodward was that. He never stopped asking questions and he never stopped listening for answers. And God showed him the truth. And his life became meaningful.

I hope your life has meaning this morning. It will if you see yourself as a steward.