Sometimes it sure seems like there's a larger plan.
After Brandon Phillips was forced to resign from Donald Trump's Georgia campaign a week ago when confronted with a report about a 2008 crime, he returned to his home in Tallahassee.
He's kept a hand in a handful of legislative races and plunged back into a newfound hobby - spearfishing - that he picked up about a year ago. He likes to joke that it helps him clear his mind from working in politics, since "swimming with sharks is often safer."
He was spearfishing in shark-infested waters on Sunday with his friend Dean Brodley when something caught the corner of his eye. He pointed it out to Brodley, who was captaining the boat, and they headed in that direction.
"As we got closer, we saw it was people in the water, splashing, waving their hands, yelling and shouting," Phillips said.
Brodley navigated quickly over to the men in the water. He and his passengers pulled them aboard. According to the men's account, their boat sank just after they had set out at 8 that morning. Phillips spotted them at 4 p.m., after they were floating for eight hours. They were only about three and a half hours from sunset when the situation could have turned deadly.
The men told Phillips that their boat plummeted to the bottom of the ocean from what they think was a crack in the hull. Several boats had passed them while they were stranded, but none had noticed them floating like buoys in the water. "Cooler paid for itself," one of the stranded men quipped to his rescuers.
Phillips left gobsmacked by the experience.
"I'm certainly not one to be teaching Sunday school," said Phillips, "but I sure think that was God's way of reminding me not to despair."
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