Sixteen-year-old Robyn Stevens...
Illustration
Sixteen-year-old Robyn Stevens decided to give her father, Arthur, a flashlight for Christmas. It was an ordinary model, just a simple three-cell flashlight. She thought her father might like it, especially since it was waterproof and he spent a lot of time as a member of a tugboat crew in Hancock, Maine. Shortly thereafter in January, the tugboat Harkness was caught in a storm about 25 miles out to sea. The stern started taking on water when the bilge pump froze, and the captain began radioing the Coast Guard station at Southwest Harbor, "Mayday! We're going down." Vance Bunker, a resident of Matinicus Island, not far from where the boat was sinking, heard the call. Knowing that the Coast Guard could never make that distance in time, he, together with two friends, set out in the Jan-Ellen, Bunker's 36-foot lobster boat. On the way, he heard the tugboat captain's last call indicating that the three men onboard were jumping into the water. Almost giving up hope of ever finding them, the men on the rescue boat saw a thin beam of light. Half dead in the icy water, were the three men with arms locked together. Their clothes were frozen to a ladder that had come lose from the wreckage of the Harkness. Arthur Stevens was too cold to grasp anything, but almost miraculously, the small waterproof flashlight was frozen to the back of another crewmember's glove, pointing straight up to the sky -- a beacon that saved them.
A special beacon guided the Magi to the house in Bethlehem, to the one who would save them. They followed the light of the star in the East that led them to the Savior, whom they worshiped and adored.
A special beacon guided the Magi to the house in Bethlehem, to the one who would save them. They followed the light of the star in the East that led them to the Savior, whom they worshiped and adored.
