Jesus told Nicodemus, "No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again" (John 3:3). The phrase describes a fresh start so complete that it is like beginning life all over again.
This story about being born again, retold in our own words, comes from one of the most dramatic sea rescues of the 1990s. It ends with a takeaway for sermons or reflection.
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"Like Being Born All Over Again": Tony Bullimore in the Southern Ocean
In January 1997, the British yachtsman Tony Bullimore was sailing alone in the Vendée Globe round-the-world race, deep in the Southern Ocean, far south of Australia.
A violent storm was raging. Enormous waves, some reportedly as tall as a multi-storey building, crashed over his yacht with a roar like thunder. Then disaster struck. His boat's keel broke off, and the yacht flipped upside down.
Bullimore was trapped inside the overturned hull. Water poured in through a broken window. In parts of the cabin it was knee-deep, in others waist-deep. The air was bitterly cold, close to freezing, and it was completely dark, because no light could reach the inside of the upturned boat.
Again and again he tried to get out to release his life raft, but he could not. So he retreated to a small shelf in the dark and waited. He had very little food, a few bars of chocolate, and a device for turning seawater into drinking water. His fingers became frostbitten. He was thousands of kilometres from land, and he believed he would probably die.
For four days he survived in the freezing darkness. Then an aircraft of the Royal Australian Air Force found the upturned hull and dropped a sonar buoy into the water nearby. Inside the hull, Bullimore heard faint pinging sounds. With hope rising, he began banging on the hull to let whoever was out there know that he was still alive.
The next morning, the Australian warship HMAS Adelaide arrived alongside. Sailors in a small boat came over and knocked on the hull. Bullimore heard them, took a deep breath and swam out through the wreckage of his cabin and up to the surface.
Afterwards he described the moment he saw the warship. It was, he said, like looking at a picture of life itself: heaven, absolute heaven. He had begun to look back over his life, thinking it had been a good one and that he had done most of what he wanted to do. He had not expected to see another day. If he had to choose words, he said, it was "a miracle. An absolute miracle."
Later he told reporters that the experience had changed him. He felt he had become more human. He would be gentler with people, he said, and would listen to them more. He remembered an old friend who had once survived a heart attack, and who said that when he opened his bedroom window and breathed the fresh air afterwards, it was like being born all over again. That, said Bullimore, was exactly how he felt.
Bullimore's words echo a feeling many people describe after coming close to death: a fresh start, a second chance, a new appreciation of life. The Christian gospel speaks of something deeper still: not just a narrow escape, but new life given by God. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, we are rescued from the darkness and offered the chance to begin again, as new people.
Takeaway: "If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!" (2 Corinthians 5:17). Being born again is not just feeling grateful for a second chance; it is receiving new life from the One who came to rescue us.
Source: Scott Higgins, drawing on reports in The Sunday Age, January 1997; background on the 1996–97 Vendée Globe.
Final thoughts
A man trapped in the dark, a knock on the hull and a swim into the light. Tony Bullimore's rescue is a vivid picture of what it means to be given life again.
For related stories, see our stories about hope and stories about grace. For further reading, Sopranu reviews Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning.
What would it look like for you to live this week as someone who has been given new life?
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These stories are retold in our own words for teaching and reflection. Sources are credited under each story.
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