Written By: Ed Chinn
Narrated By: Kara Lea Kennedy
In August 1996, 10-year-old Taylor Touchstone went swimming with his family in a creek in the Florida panhandle. Minutes later, the moderately autistic boy, known for having no sense of fear, vanished. His family members reacted immediately; they knew the creek emptied into a vast and dangerous swamp.
A massive search quickly formed. Boats and helicopters with high-tech tracking systems, and more than 200 volunteers, covered the area. Everyone felt they were in a race with death. The swamp was home for alligators, rattlesnakes, and water moccasins. One year earlier, four Army Rangers had died while training in the same swamp.
After covering a 36-square-mile area over three days, the search effort came to a sorrowful end. Taylor was presumed dead.
But early in the morning of the fourth day, fourteen miles away from where Taylor was last seen, a fisherman saw a boy calmly bobbing in the water. He knew immediately who the boy was, pulled him into his boat, and roared away to the marina. The boy was naked, sunburned, hungry, thirsty, and had some minor cuts and bites. Beyond that, he was fine.
Taylor, now about forty, has never offered a public detailing of that incredible journey; no one knows how he survived so long or travelled so far. But, the day of his rescue, photos of alligators made him very happy. Did one or more of them give him transportation across the swamp?
Albert Einstein once asked a profoundly spiritual question, “Is the universe a friendly place?”
Maybe both answers, “yes” and “no,” are true. I have long suspected the universe gives us what we ask. Perhaps that’s what David, the Psalmist, saw when he wrote of God, “To the pure you show yourself pure, but to the crooked you show yourself shrewd. You rescue the humble, but you humiliate the proud.” – Psalm 18:26-27 NLT
When our words fall as seed into the soil, we live by the crop that comes up. Plant generously; reap abundantly. Plant miserly; reap miserably. Is the universe a friendly place? Answer wisely; you might have to live by your response.
Taylor Touchstone trusted his environment. And apparently, his environment responded by giving him full support. That may be why many children seem to instinctively see and trust the universe—at least their part of it—as safe and pleasant. They see as they are.
Yes, some people die in swamps or lose everything and end up living on the street. But I also know attitudes of joy, faith, and vulnerability help us greet each day with joyful and positive expectancy. And so often the universe responds with strong support.
When author and professor Dallas Willard was diagnosed with cancer, he said, “I think when I die, it might be some time until I know it.” He knew the membrane between this life and the next one is thin. He also knew we are all moving through a much larger and friendlier terrain than we ever imagined.
I affirm its arms are wide open. We can run to them.
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