The Stranger in the Lifeboat.
What a book. It’s lived in my mind rent-free since I finished it today. This is a book I’ve had for a while—one that always stuck out among the others, waiting for its moment. And let me tell you: when that moment came, it hit hard. I cried. Mitch Albom’s writing is impeccable, so real it felt like I was there—soaked, desperate, aching for answers—on that raft.
One of the most beautiful aspects of this story is the plot twists. And yes, you might be thinking, duh. That’s everyone’s favorite part. But no. It’s not just the twist—it’s the weight of it. The timing. Especially when paired with the story’s central question: Would we know if God was staring us in the face? Would we recognize Him? Most of us would hope to say yes. But this book made me stop and ask: would I really?
What shook me wasn’t just the presence of “the stranger,” but what he represented. At first glance, yes—he’s an angel. A divine being sent in response to desperate cries. God heard Benji. But the more I sat with it, the more I saw him as something deeper too: a manifestation of Benji’s own hidden faith.
His shadow self.
The part of him he tried to bury under guilt, denial, and the ache of not being enough.
The stranger never forces belief. He doesn’t fix everything. He just is—calm, cryptic, patient. Asking only to be trusted.
And that’s what faith often looks like in real life. Not a blinding miracle. Not instant answers. But a presence. A quiet nudge in the middle of our wreckage. A whisper that we almost miss because we’ve grown used to surviving without it.
That’s why I believe the stranger is both: a divine messenger sent from above, and a reflection of the divine already planted within Benji. The two don’t cancel each other out—they make the story all the more layered, all the more human.
This book isn’t just about surviving a shipwreck—it’s about surviving ourselves.
It’s about guilt. Redemption. The uncomfortable process of confronting who we are and finding that—somehow—we’re still worthy of saving. That someone still hears us when we cry. That grace might show up in the strangest forms: a stranger, a child named Alice, a whale, a final journal entry.
“Perhaps the distance between heaven and earth is not as far as we think.” — Mitch Albom
One of the most haunting parts of this story is that they were all really there. Every passenger on that raft—Laimo, Nevin, Esther, Ginny, and the rest—was facing the same physical conditions: thirst, hunger, sun, fear. But their inner experiences? Entirely different.
Some clung to control. Some unraveled. Some turned to faith. Some couldn’t stand the idea of it. And it reminded me that we can all be in the same lifeboat in life—grieving the same loss, walking through the same crisis—but processing it in completely different ways.
And that’s what made the stranger’s presence so powerful. He didn’t just represent God or belief in a general sense. He became a mirror. What they saw in him depended on what they carried within themselves.
Faith didn’t arrive to make the journey easy—it arrived to make it possible.
We all break differently. We all believe differently. And somehow, God still meets us right there, even in the tension.
Have you ever looked back on a season of life and realized that God was there, even if you couldn’t recognize Him at the time?
•Do you believe God could come to you in a form you least expect?
•What’s the quietest, most faithful part of yourself trying to say right now?
