Just One Banana

 I have always enjoyed reading the true stories of missionaries and learning how, through terrible trials and suffering, they have remained faithful to the Lord. One of these stories is documented in Darlene Deibler Rose’s autobiography, Evidence Not Seen.* She told the Lord that she would go anywhere with Him no matter what the cost. In 1938, at the age of twenty-one, she was the first American woman to enter the rugged interior of Dutch New Guinea with her pastor husband, Russell. The young couple, however, was captured during the Japanese invasion of World War II and sent to separate prison camps, never to see each other again.

Through the crack of her cell window, she witnessed a guard in the courtyard sneak a bunch of bananas to a woman. At this point, Darlene was only skin and bones, and she dropped to her cell floor, exhausted and craving bananas. She looked up and pleaded to the Lord for just one. But how could God possibly get her a banana through these prison walls, especially with the fact that she was not allowed to have any visitors? Through an amazing series of events, her past camp commander had bananas delivered to her cell. Not just one banana but ninety-two! She credits these bananas with keeping her alive until her rescue at the end of the war.

For ten years, I was a single parent with four children to raise. I felt like Darlene, isolated in a dark prison cell with no one to help me. I cried out to the Lord daily; many times, I didn’t know where our next meal would come from or how He would provide for our basic needs. But provide He did! In one instance, a church friend took my children for the afternoon to play at the park. When she returned in the evening, she had fed them and bought them new school shoes.

God can do miracles even in the most unlikely circumstances. He knows our situation and cares for us with an everlasting love.

If you find yourself in a difficult situation, trust in Him with all your heart. We cannot lean on our own understanding, for His ways are not our ways.

 He will not fail us even in the darkest of situations.

 Karen M. Phillips