Story of the Day for Thursday January 9, 2014
Turn Your Radio On
“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
Matthew 13:9
Scientists were excited when the Navy discovered an enormous iceberg near Point Barrow, Alaska. The iceberg was 3 ½ miles long and enabled transport planes to land with supplies to build ARLIS II (Arctic Research Laboratory Ice Station).
In 1961, scientists erected fourteen buildings and began their research. They were, periodically, resupplied with food and fuel by airdrops. But this was not a simple operation. The iceberg was drifting.
In September of 1963, the situation was growing tense. The research station had drifted near the North Pole, a thousand miles from Point Barrow, and, while food supplies were fine, the researchers were down to their last barrel of diesel fuel. Diesel was used to run the generators which provided electricity to operate the station. Most importantly, it operated the radio navigation beacon that guided supply planes to their iceberg.
One day, an ionospheric storm turned the radio to static. In frustration, the radio operator, Gary Sides, turned the navigational beacon off. He had no idea that a resupply plane was blindly flying in the area and pleading, “Turn on your beacon.”
The plane couldn’t locate the research station and decided to turn back. But just then, for some inexplicable reason, Gary Sides flipped the radio on and heard the pilot say “ . . . beacon on.” Realizing a plane was flying nearby trying to locate them, he turned the navigational beacon back on, and the resupply plane landed within the hour.
If the radioman had not decided to turn the radio on, the scientists on ARLIS II would’ve perished.
Jesus told a story once about a man who sowed seed in his field. Some fell in fertile soil, some fell on a hardened footpath. The seed was the same, but some soils allowed the seed to germinate and others didn’t.
Once, Carl, a friend of mine, was talking to his co-worker who didn’t believe in God. “If God is there,” he challenged Carl, “how come you know he’s there and I don’t?”
Carl told his co-worker his problem was he didn’t have his radio on.
“What do you mean?”
“Look,” Carl asked him, “can you see radio waves?”
“No.”
“But you believe in them, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” his co-worker answered – wondering where this was going.
“Radio waves are all around us right now. They’re passing through our bodies.” Then Carl asked, “How come we can’t hear them?”
“Because we haven’t turned the radio on.”
“Exactly,” Carl said.
(copyright 2011 by climbinghigher.org and by Marty Kaarre)
(image: http://www.csp.navy.mil/asl/ScrapBook/IceCamps/APLIS2003.jpg)
Story of the Day--climbinghigher 
