大象传媒

Good morning. There was no moonlight in the early hours of the 2nd August 1943, as the Torpedo patrol boats lay quietly watching and waiting for the Japanese destroyers off the coast of the Solomon Islands. One was suddenly rammed by a destroyer, killing one crew member outright and throwing the rest overboard.聽
Its 26 year old commander, Lieutenant John F Kennedy, towed one of his injured men, as they swam the three and a half miles to the nearest island. A few days later, they abandoned that deserted place to swim to another larger island, in hope of rescue. Eventually they met two Solomon Islanders, Eroni Kumana and Biuku Gasa who agreed to carry a message, written by Kennedy on a coconut. They set off in a dugout canoe, across聽 35 miles of Japanese patrolled waters, to reach an Australian Coastwatcher.
They got the message through and guided the rescuers to Kennedy and his crew. In later years, they wrote to Kennedy to congratulate him on his becoming President, but although they were invited to the inauguration, they weren鈥檛 allowed to go, and never met JFK again in person聽People used to ask Kennedy how he became a war hero, and he would reply: 'It was involuntary. They sank my boat.'"
Perhaps he knew that the choices those Solomon islanders made was the free, courageous choice of heroes.
Today, we all have choices聽 so we pray: God grant us your Spirit of courage today, to act to serve and to save others, to bring life and not death, love and not hatred to our world and joy to all people of good will. Amen