A fun day at Long Beach, Washington, took a sudden turn for the worse when Paul ‎Douglas, while watching his son and his nephew, both about ten years old, saw them go ‎farther from shore than they should have gone, and then they begin to panic. So he ran ‎though the pounding surf and waded about forty or fifty yards through ever deepening ‎water  where the boys were having trouble. His nephew, the ‎stronger swimmer of the two, seemed to be holding his own, but he saw his son was ‎flailing with his arms and gasping for breath. He reached his boy and held onto him, ‎holding him above the shoulder high water.‎

Running through the bitter cold water had tired him, but the important ‎thing was his son whom he loved more than anything was safe. Because of his love, he ‎was willing to put himself in harms way to protect his son. He never stopped to ‎consider the danger to himself. This is the way love works.

He was holding onto his boy when he discovered his feet were trapped in the sand. ‎Evidently he had stood for a few seconds sinking in a patch of soft, shifting, sand, that ‎some locals call a crab hole. He couldnt pull his feet free from the suction of the ‎sand and the more he struggled, the lower he sank. ‎Soon the waves were crashing over him and he was no longer able to catch his breath.

‎He held on to his son holding him safe until at last, unable to breathe, he lost ‎consciousness and let his boy go.

A short time later a rescue team arrived at the scene and pulled his badly shaken up ‎son out of the water. The nephew had swum safely to the shore on his own. The ‎rescue party searched for the dad for forty minutes, even calling in a helicopter to assist ‎in their efforts. At last they located him, but it was too late, for he had drowned helping ‎his son . A member of the rescue squad reported to the media, The dad died a hero, ‎saving his son.

Paul Douglas loved his boy and died trying to protect him. Love is the earnest desire ‎for the good of another, that is stronger even that the desire for the good of  ones self. ‎Solomon felt the power of love when he wrote the following Old Testament passage in the Song of ‎Solomon. Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine ‎arm: for love is as strong as death; jealousy as cruel as the grave; the coals thereof are the ‎coals of fire which hath a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, ‎neither can the floods drown it: if a man should give the entire substance of his house for ‎love it should be utterly condemned. Paul Douglas loved his son with a love that was ‎stronger than death, and he gave more than the substance of his house for it, he gave his ‎own life that his son might live.

I would like to talk to you about another whose love was far stronger than death which ‎many waters couldnt quench, neither could the floods drown it. I would like to talk to you ‎about the love of the Lord Jesus Christ for a perishing world. Even though we are all ‎sinners he loved us so much that he left heaven above to be born a man. In the four ‎New Testament gospels you can trace his life on earth and see how truth and love ‎shined in all he did and said.