Along the coast of New York is a little town called East Hampton. And I recently read that there is a cemetery in East Hampton where you can find 12 identical graves that have been laid side by side.1 There’s a story behind them, of course.
All the way back in the 1800s, there was a terrible storm in that area. A passing ship struck a rock and began to break apart and sink. It was close enough to land that the townsfolk could see the ship foundering and see the sailors struggling. It was close enough that they could actually fire ropes out to the ship. Twelve of the sailors managed to climb into a lifeboat and grab hold of one of the ropes. The townspeople began to pull it in, drawing the sailors closer and closer to shore. But just as they were about to touch land, the rope snapped. A huge wave flipped the lifeboat and threw them all into the sea. Not one survived. And so as their bodies washed ashore, they were taken to the cemetery and laid to rest.
Just imagine coming that close to rescue but still drowning. Even though those 12 men got almost close enough to touch land, they suffered the exact same fate as those who went down with the ship. To be almost rescued is no different from not being rescued at all. To be almost saved is still to be completely lost.
I sometimes wonder how many people in your church and mine have heard the gospel, have thought about its claims, and have perhaps even found themselves agreeing with many of them—yes, Jesus existed; yes, he died for sins; yes, he died for people like me—but have still refused to trust in him. It is one thing to assent to facts, but an entirely different thing to trust in Jesus.
It is one thing to assent to facts, but an entirely different thing to trust in Jesus.
I have often thought about the people of East Hampton and about what they did as they saw the ship going down. They refused to sit idly by. They did not merely express their concern for the men fighting for their lives, but rather took every action possible to save them. And though the men were still lost, at least the townsfolk bore none of the blame, for they had done all that was within their power to do.
And I hope it could someday be said of you and me that we did all we could—that we took every compassionate action and spoke every exhorting word. I hope it could be said of us that if any of the people around us were lost, it was only after we had fought as hard as we knew how to rescue them, to bring them safely to the calm shore of God’s salvation. Let it never be said of you or me that we stood idly by and watched them drown in sight of the land. For to be almost saved is still to be completely lost.
- I read this in a book from the 1800s in which the the author told how his brother had conducted the funeral service for those 12 sailors. Because it was so long ago, it’s possible the graves are no longer there. ↩︎
