Stranded Teens Send Up a Prayer, Then the Amen Motors into View
When you say “amen” at the end of a prayer, you probably don’t consider the definition or etymology of the phrase. So let’s start with a little primer.
The word has been unchanged from Hebrew to Ecclesiastical Greek to Late Latin to English. The Online Etymology Dictionary describes it as “‘truth,’ used adverbially as an expression of agreement (as in Deuteronomy xxvii.26, I Kings i.36), from Semitic root a-m-n ‘to be trustworthy, confirm, support.'”
Off the coast of Vilano Beach, Florida, a boat christened Amen helped save the lives of two stranded teens — and proved to them the truth of God’s protection.
The story began, according to WJAX-TV, on a high school senior skip day for students at Christ’s Church Academy in Jacksonville, Florida, on April 18.
Tyler Smith and Heather Brown were among those gathered at Vilano Beach, near St. Augustine. They’d been friends since the fourth grade. The two swam out from shore and, at some point, realized they’d gone out far enough that they might not make it back.
Both of the 17-year-olds were soccer players, according to Fox News. Yet even with their youth and athleticism, they were left exhausted from battling the waves for two hours, holding onto each other for support.
That’s when Smith called upon God to deliver them from the life-threatening situation.
“I cried out: ‘If You really do have a plan for us, like, come on. Just bring something,’” he told WJAX.
God did have a plan for them, in the form of a boat sailing from South Florida to New Jersey: the Amen, which Brown says she spotted.
“I started swimming towards it. I was like, ‘I’m going to get this boat. Just stay here. I’m going to get this boat. We are going to live,'” she said.
“Over all the wind, waves and engines, we thought we heard a desperate scream,” boat captain Eric Wagner said. “Exhausted and near the end, the boy told me he called out for God’s help. Then we showed up.”
Wagner called the Coast Guard and piloted the craft over to the teens, who were able to climb aboard.
“I told them the name of the vessel, that’s when they started to cry,” Wagner said. “The young couple was gracious and grateful to us and to God. It was the latter all along.”
Brown concurred: “The first words that came out of my mouth were, ‘God is real.’”
“From us crying out to God, for Him to send someone for us to keep living and a boat named ‘Amen,’ there’s no way that it wasn’t Him,” Smith later told Fox News.
The school echoed a similar message.
“The staff, students and families of Christ’s Church Academy are incredibly grateful for God‘s protection over Heather and Tyler,” Jeanie Collins, director of marketing and development at the school, told Fox News. “Thank you to Mr. Eric Wagner, captain of the ‘Amen’ vessel that rescued our students, for your action and compassion!”
And, thanks to the protection of God, they’ll both be graduating on May 19. Smith and Brown plan to enter the military.
You could, of course, chalk this up to a coincidence — a very unlikely coincidence, mind you, but a coincidence nonetheless. However, to this writer, it was the very essence of “amen.”
For support, there was the boat. There was the trustworthiness of God’s covenant with His people: “And if we know that he hears us — whatever we ask — we know that we have what we asked of him” (1 John 5:15). And for two teens who faced death, it was a very real example of the truth of God’s existence.
Amen, indeed.
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