Message in a Bottle AN AMAZING FACT: In 1493, while in the West Indies, Christopher Columbus tossed a bottle overboard that contained a message for Queen Isabella I of Spain. In 1852, 359 years later, the bottle was found by the captain of an American ship and delivered to Queen Isabella II of Spain. Putting a message in a bottle and tossing it into the ocean is nothing new. The first record of messages in bottles is found in 310 B.C., when Greek philosopher Theophrastus conducted an experiment to show that the Mediterranean Sea was formed by the inflowing of the Atlantic Ocean. An amazing story of a message in a bottle was a letter written by Private Thomas Hughes, a British World War I soldier. In 1914 he wrote a letter to his wife, placed it in a green ginger beer bottle, and tossed it into the English Channel. In 1999 a fisherman found the bottle. Hughes wife had died in 1979, but they located his 86-year-old daughter in New Zealand and sent her the message. The Bible tells of a message, not in a bottle, that was written on a scroll. Jeremiah had a message from God for Jehoiakim, King of Judah. As it was read to the king, he took a scribe’s knife, cut up the message, and burned it in a fire. God then instructed Jeremiah, “Take yet another scroll, and write on it all the former words … which Jehoiakim the king of Judah has burned” (Jeremiah 36:28). God has a message in Scripture sent for us to read. It is an old yet personal message. Rather than destroying the message, we would do well to think of it as a treasured letter in a bottle. Open the message today. Take it to heart.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 10:26:28 +0000
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