“God moves in mysterious ways…” (Christian Hymn, William Cowper, 1773) We never have to be afraid to pray and ask the Lord what he is doing. However, some things we will not understand in this life, some things we cannot understand even if the Lord told us, and some things we will never understand. He is God, and we are not.
If we live long enough, some of the great stories in life will come full circle and reveal the majesty of God’s sovereign dealings with humanity. Here is one such story. Jacob DeShazer was a bombardier as part of Jimmy Doolittle’s raid against Japan after they had bombed Pearl Harbor and plunged the United States into the throes of World War II. The mission was an attempt to let Japan know that the long arm of the USA could reach them. It would come with a price, as the bombers taking off to fly over and bomb Japan could not carry enough fuel to return. The men would have to ditch their planes over China and hope to return to the United States.
Jacob DeShazer was captured by the Japanese on April 18, 1942, and held prisoner for the remainder of the war. Within the first six months, he watched three of his fellow airmen executed and one starved to death by their captures. Jacob was an atheist, but the events around him in the prison camp forced him to question why the Americans and Japanese hated each other so much.
Jacob remembered hearing how the Bible had answers to life's questions. So, he asked the prison guards for a Bible. They laughed at and mocked him for 18 months. Then two years after his capture, one of the guards flung a copy of the Scriptures into Jacob’s cell and said, “You have three weeks to read it, and then I’m taking it away.” Sure enough, the Bible was taken away from Jacob after three weeks.
However, God’s Word had already begun heaven’s influence within Jacob’s heart. While in prison, he surrendered his life to Christ. When the war ended a year later, he was released from prison, returned to America, began to attend Christian College, and prepared to become a missionary. In 1948, Jacob, his wife, and his infant son flew to Japan. Jacob became a Christian missionary to the country he fought against during the war.
While in Japan, he met Mitsuo Fuchida, the captain who led the first wave of Japanese planes on the attack of Pearl Harbor. They became fast friends, and Mitsuo became a Christian as he learned about Jacob’s conversion. These two men ministered together as they preached and reached out to the Japanese people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In 1959, Jacob established a church in the city he had bombed during the war.
Let us choose to trust God! He is working things out we could never fathom. If the Lord can do all of this in Jacob’s life after only three weeks of reading the Bible, imagine what he can do if we spend our life studying God’s Word. Yes, God works in… Mysterious Ways!
