All of my summer earning as a teenager came from either teaching swimming or life guarding at various beaches. The summer before I left for university, despite my best efforts to secure a better paying job, was no exception. I was working two beaches that year. We always worked alone no matter what the weather and the size of the crowd at the park. When I consider the working conditions then, I am sure that they could not and would not be replicated today. We worked hundreds of feet of rocky and sandy shoreline, with one deep area at either park. Our equipment was very minimal, the most useful being a telephone with which to call for help. A weekend crowd on a hot day could consist of hundreds of swimmers, the majority of whom were children. There was one sign at the entrance that outlined the few obvious rules for use of the park, most of which did not concern water safety, but the use of the change rooms and washrooms.
Most days as a lifeguard were very long and uneventful. The job could be very boring. On cool days, reading at a picnic table in a deserted park was your only option to stay awake. The job involved a lot of walking and extreme sun exposure before the days of sunscreen. I remember so well one very hot Saturday afternoon in July of 1967. There were at least two hundred adults and children in the water. As usual, I patrolled the shoreline barefoot from shallow to deep water always watching the water and correcting any obviously dangerous behaviour observed. A woman in her thirties approached me in a very agitated state. She could not find her six year old son. She had been looking for him for several minutes and was now in a state close to panic. I asked her where she had last seen him and whether or not he had been playing with other kids. She could only point to the shallow water and shake her head signifying that he had been alone. I was not comforted much by the fact that this boy was last seen in the shallow water. A young child can succumb quickly to drowning in a foot or less of water.
It is miraculous in a way how the human condition can move from bored and day dreaming to extremely alert and thinking clearly. The page of the Royal Life Saving Manual virtually appeared before my eyes and I knew what had to be done. I called the police for their assistance with the crowd and the possible need for other emergency services. With a whistle and a megaphone, I aggressively asked that all swimmers get out of the water, which they did very obediently. I then asked for teenage or adult volunteers to hold hands in a sweep line from the shallows to the chest deep water and search every foot of the water for several hundred yards along the shore. The line of volunteers was about a hundred feet long. My worst fear then became that they would indeed find an unconscious or even lifeless six year old boy in the water. Instead, as they pressed further and further down the beach right out of the park and in front of private residences, a young boy approached those in the shallow end and asked what they were doing holding hands. We had found the lost boy and indeed he wasn’t drowned, but just wandering where he did not belong.
What I remember most about that day, was the reaction of the mother as she saw her son being escorted to the beach by an adult volunteer searcher. Her face literally lit up as she saw him coming at a distance. She began to shake and cry uncontrollably. When he arrived nearer the shore, she ran towards him and nearly suffocated him with her embrace, weeping all the while. Her relief and joy at seeing him alive and well were quite simply overwhelming. I am not sure what happened at home, but not once did she scold him in the least for wandering off and causing a major event for all at the beach. Her only reaction at this point was all-consuming joy. My memory of her response to the return of her son, reminds me very much of the return of the prodigal son in Luke 15. In verse 20 we see the same picture of God’s everlasting love for the return of confessed and repentant sinners. He is so anxious to run and welcome the sinner into the Kingdom, God doesn’t even wait to hear the confession that He knows is forthcoming.
20 "And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.
Later in the parable we read the very familiar words:
24 ‘for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to be merry.
God is awaiting our return to the fold with great anticipation. His joy knows no bounds when we finally do arrive.
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