Unbroken

Normally I do a review on Goodreads and paste my review here. But today my review of Unbroken was short. I thought it was better that way because, well, I don't want people having any sort of impression about the book based on what I had to say about it. I think some books are best read cold.

But I have just a few things to say about it here:

1. When, in the midst of a mind-numbingly painful forty-seven days lost at sea, Louis Zamperini and Allen Phillips reach the doldrums, I thought of the brilliance and beauty of nature. How can two men survive such an ordeal? In the most dire of moments, God provided. He provided a bird or a fish or a rainstorm. I suppose you could say it was the luck of the draw. I don't believe that. Perhaps that belief is a choice. If so, it is a choice I choose to make.

But in an even more critical way than just nourishment, God provided. Zamperini was able to find peace in that moment when they reached the doldrums...when he looked out to see the grandeur of creation. God provides for both our physical and or spiritual needs. Always. This story is proof. The circumstances are dire. I would be hard pressed to think of anything more critical then being lost at sea without food or water. Those men had to wait, often being pushed to their extreme limits, before what was needed. But what they needed did come. Beautiful.

2. Christ saves. After more than two years of harsh punishment and starvation, Zamperini survives the Japanese POW camps. That alone was a miracle. But I think the better story is what came after. Filled with rage and a deep seeded desire for revenge, Zamperini turned to alcohol. He was entirely out of control, about to lose his wife and new daughter, when his wife found Christ. Billy Graham came to California. After much convincing, Zamperini was led to one of his sermons. The first experience didn't work out so well. But the second..in the second he experienced the miracle.

In the second trip to one of Graham's sermons, Zamperini found Christ. He remembered the promise he made on the raft several years before. He promised to serve God every day of his life if God would save him. And in the moment, he knew that he, Zamperini, had not kept up his part of the bargain. Zamperini was changed. He was able to forgive his tormentors. He was able to give up alcohol. He was even able to greet several of his POW torturers and embrace them. How else could he have done that without the grace of Christ?

3. I know plenty of people didn't survive plane crashes in World War II, and I know that several thousand POWs in Japan didn't live through the war. So it might be easy to say that life is just random and you get lucky or you don't get lucky. However, just because some died and some lived is not evidence in my mind that God didn't guide Zamperini and others like him through this ordeal. Who knows why Zamperini lived? I chose to believe it is because he would tell his story, and his story would serve God by giving other people hope. Maybe that is...I don't know...cheesy, silly, childish, naive, and/or unsophisticated of me. It really doesn't matter.

I still chose to believe.