Capt. Pete and Monica Stone

Recently, this message came from Grace Brethren chaplain, Capt. Pete Stone, in Afghanistan. With the message was attached a PowerPoint presentation that included the chilling story of a near miss. A portion of it is reproduced here, but the bottom line is included in the cover message from Capt. Stone (pictured at right with his wife, Monica):

Just wanted to say thanks for your prayers. … Want you to know how much I love you. Life is fragile. I was reminded of that the other day. May God give each of us grace to live fully in the moment and in light of eternity.

Thanks for your love and support, and more than anything, for using your lives to share the love of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world–that’s the only thing that will last beyond this brief span we call a lifetime.

The night before, we gathered for worship in the Word, communion, and prayer. We bowed in surrender to God’s authority and his purpose in our lives. In closing, we grabbed a shoulder and prayed for God’s sovereign protection, and we specifically prayed for God’s mercy against acts of violence and random accidents. The next day I was standing outside by a wall talking to soldiers inside our outpost. A controlled detonation occurred to destroy empty oxygen tanks. The detonation occurred within normal safety standards on the other side of a ridge several hundred meters away outside the walls of the compound. I was facing the direction of the blast as I talked to the person next to me.

These controlled detonations happen all the time. This day, however, a 2” disk of jagged steel soared thousands of feet into the air.

25 seconds later…it fell in an almost exact 90 degree angle– straight down to Earth…

…straight down my back.

The shrapnel fell straight down from the sky, grazed my back, and knocked me to the ground.

He says that had the shrapnel fallen 3 inches toward the front of him, it would have killed him. 

“Thank you for doing this…

…for all of us. Please keep doing it.”