Sun Inspiration

Morning Inspiration with Pastor Merritt

There is an amazing book entitled, “The Fall of Fortresses” that tells the remarkable story of a B-17 Flying Fortress that flew a bombing mission over Germany toward the end of World War II. The bomber took several direct hits from Nazi anti-aircraft guns and a few actually hit the fuel tank, but miraculously none of them exploded.

After the plane landed, eleven unexploded 20mm shells were carefully removed from the bomber’s fuel tank. Every one of them was dismantled and examined and to everyone’s amazement all eleven had no explosive material inside them at all. They couldn’t understand it. Why would the Germans fire empty shells? The mystery was solved when a small note was found inside one of the shells written in Czechoslovakian. Translated it read, “This is all we can do for you now.”

Here is the amazing story. A member of the Czech underground working in a Nazi ammunitions factory had deliberately omitted the explosives in at least eleven of the shells on his assembly line. Not knowing if any of his efforts would prove effective he slipped a note into one of the shells hoping that someone who benefitted from his efforts might one day discover why.

That same person may very well have died wondering if the little work he was doing to subvert the enemy war machine would ever make any difference, but doing what little he could, exercising his responsibility to take his opportunity, to use the ability he had for the good of someone else, he saved the lives of an entire crew on a B-17 bomber.