Darlene Rose was stuck in a Japanese concentration camp. The conditions were rough, they were fed meal-wormy food, and she was beaten and bruised, close to giving up.
Darlene Rose had been serving as a missionary to the native people of Papua New Guinea in the early 1940s when war broke out. Soon the Japanese invaded the village and not long thereafter all the foreign personnel and missionaries were rounded up and taken to a Japanese run concentration camp where they were forced to do back breaking labor.
As an American living in the south Pacific at this time, Darlene was subsequently accused of spying on the Japanese for the Americans. This led to an even harsher internment as she was soon taken to a higher security camp and thrown into a solitary cell. Darlene read the sign above the door as she entered- she was on death row.
During her confinement Darlene suffered from malaria. Darlene was able to grasp the bars on her little window in their cell and pull/crawl up just enough to get a little air to help soothe her fever. One day she looked out the window to see someone eating a banana. A banana! It looked so good! Her months of watery porridge had worn on her and suddenly all she wanted in the world was one banana.
Darlene decided to pray about it. She asked the Lord to send her just one banana, please, just one! Having completed her prayer, she set about thinking how the Lord could get her a banana. There was an older guard who was somewhat nice to her, maybe he would give her a banana–but no. If he was caught he would be beaten or killed. After thinking about it a while longer, she finally concluded that there was just no way that God could get a banana into her cell.
Shortly after she finished praying, there was a knock at her cell door and the door opened to reveal one of the guards from the camp she had been interned at first. She was glad to see him, and she shared the gospel message with him. He left and Darlene was grateful she had had the opportunity to share the gospel with him.
A while later a knock came at her cell door, the door opened, and a man stood there holding an armload of bananas for her. The guard from the first camp had unknowingly been the one sent to help answer Darlene’s prayer and he managed to send her 92 bananas!
Do you believe God can do the impossible in your life?
In Ezekiel 37 God takes Ezekiel up to the valley of dry bones. These bones were old, bleached out and very dry. The Lord then asks Ezekiel, “Son of man, can these bones become living people again?”
“O Sovereign Lord,” I replied, “You alone know the answer to that.”
God wasn’t asking a technical or hypothetical question, He was asking Ezekiel if he believed these bones could live again. God then gives Ezekiel a vision in which Ezekiel sees all the bones in the valley coming to life again. The bones could come back to life if God worked a miracle.
What is the valley of the bones in your life?
Ezekiel was asked if he believed the bones could come to life. Darlene Rose had her mind blown by someone delivering her an armload of bananas in a concentration camp. What situation are you telling yourself is too dead for God to breathe new life into?
Remember God doesn’t just deliver bananas to people in concentration camps, he doesn’t just bring dead bones back to life, He doesn’t just deliver envelopes of money to people in their mailboxes (That God’s Power May Be Seen). He also delivers you from the struggles in your life too.
Sometimes we start to give up on God because He hasn’t yet worked the miracle we want in our lives. Many times we think that there is something special about these other people, or other times, that somehow matter more to God than our present circumstances–but that isn’t the case.
I don’t know what season you are finding yourself in right now but I do know this–no matter how bleak the outlook, no matter how impossible the circumstances are, God is still able to do the impossible in your life too.
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