My friend Russ and I have intermittently crossed paths around town over the past 35 years. We met in the early ’80s while working at the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau. He's a soft-spoken man with a calm demeanor. His politics are impenetrably liberal; he lives a very secular life. His immovable secular disposition makes his story especially compelling.

While engaging in retiree small talk one afternoon, uncharacteristically and in hushed gentle tones, Russ began telling a personal story. I saw from the onset it was very spiritual in nature, whcihhe seemedunaware of... at first. He seemed to be in a “zone” as they say in sport jargon, enormously focused as he took a “deep dive” into a personal recollection. He appeared to be realizing for the first time, the story he had known so well his whole life, had in fact, been a deeply spiritual experience. I characterize his story as, how an eight-year-old boy spoke to himself seventy years later, causing an epiphany.

Several years following the end of WWII, Russ was eight years old living in Redondo Beach, California.  One summer day, the local boys club took he and several other members to the Redondo Beach Public Pool. Like most eight-year-old boys, he was full of excitement and energy, and a lot of overconfidence.

A great splash exploded amidst the other children as he leapt into the pool. He immediately began to paddle out into the open water with the pool’s bottom gradually sinking away from his dangling feet with every stroke. He reached a point where he realized he had gone too far for his ability. Out of energy and unable to paddle any longer, he fell helplessly beneath the surface, unable to yell, only gasping and gulping as he slowly sank deeper and deeper beneath the cacophony of the children above. “I tried to stay afloat, but it was useless!”

“As I drifted downward approaching the pool’s bottom, I became increasingly serene. Floating aimlessly, feeling no pain, or fear, euphoria overtook my senses. I saw a light, a blindingly bright light. I felt myself compelled to go to it. I was happy as I move closer and closer toward it with euphoria increasing as it neared. It was an insatiable feeling wrought with passion, a desire I didn’t want to end. I felt encapsulated in the arms of love, warmth, and serenity. I didn’t want to leave. I looked-on watching my floating body from a position outside and slightly above ‘myself.’ My ‘self’ seemed to be floating in a surreal womb of amniotic fluid cushioning and protecting me.”

At this point of the story, he stopped.

A few seconds later, he looked directly at me with a stunned expression of sudden awareness, making this pronouncement, “I felt complete.” He then continued, “Suddenly, I burst back into consciousness. A stranger was applying the old-styled resuscitation technique, the one that preceded CPR; he was successful, and I was revived.”

Russ said that he had never shared this story with anyone, saying, “I can’t explain what happened, or why I felt compelled to share it right now!” I offered those 70 years of secularism were getting in the way of his embracing the truth. I then asked him what he thought the light and euphoria was. He looked at me with solace in his eyes and haltingly said “God.” Knowing him all these years, I was stunned!

I told him he was right and that the bright light was the manifestation of God’s glory. I added that the Force that compelled him to share his story that day was the same Force that raised Jesus from the grave and was beckoning him now. I suggested that the Lord provided an extra 70 years to that eight-year-old boy that day at the pool and now, 70 years later, the Lord was providing him with another opportunity to choose “eternal” life with the same God he encountered at the bottom of the Redondo Beach Public Pool.

I ended with the observation that not everyone is given spiritual invitations like this, and that fact made him very special. Was this an epiphany, we can only pray it is accepted as such, but I note that this was the first time in 35 years that I can recall his ever publicly acknowledging “God,” and I know not his final choice.

May we all be ever attentive, for out of the mouths of babes may come our call to enter the glorious light of our Savior for evermore.

Image: AT via Magic Studio