A Beautiful Rescue

It’s interesting. Well, we’re interesting. Mankind that is. People. This species that is so insanely overwrought with self and others. Utterly driven to projecting our posterior while showing our self-evaluated intelligence to others.

A few weeks ago, we were all captivated about the story of those 33 Chilean miners that spent 69 days trapped, 17 of which without anyone on the surface knowing they were alive, 2,000 feet underground. We watched as one-by-one, they were put into a mobile tube that resembled a water heater more than an elevator, and were hoisted to the surface. At each man’s retrieval, the crowd cheered, people on TV praised, and mankind was bewildered at their predicament, the time spent bringing them home, and then their eventual reuniting with friends, family, and the president of Chile. It was profound, it was poetic, and in many ways, it was absolutely pathetic.

I am not saying that their rescue was pathetic, nor the expense, nor the speed in which they were rescued nor any other detail of their experience. My expression of ... apathy is at us, believers, not towards them.

You see, every day, we are faced with miners. But the miners we meet have not been lost in a hole, doing back breaking, difficult, and dangerous work. The miners we face are here on the surface, alive, well, and living life. They spend their day going to and fro much as we do, not even knowing that they are in a pit; and we show apathy by not talking to them about it. Who am I speaking of? Anyone want to venture a guess? No? Well, take a deep breath and keep reading.

I am speaking of those that do not know the unparalleled grace, the beautiful rescue, the unmatched joy of being rescued by and reunited with the God that created and loves them, far more than can be compared with any earthly, carnal, mortal love we can envision. We celebrate the rescue of the miners, but do we celebrate the rescue of mankind by God? Not just through our relationships and daily life of devotion, discipleship, and evangelism, but through our lives?

I guess my point is this; there are billions of people that need to know about Jesus. Now, it is not up to us to “save” anyone, only to tell the story. Our story. God’s story. We can’t save anyone, but we are carriers of He who can. But have they seen? Have they seen His grace in our lives, His forgiveness, or His redemptive power? Because in many ways, I fear we have forgotten about what God accomplished on the Cross. We know, and appreciate, that we are saved, but do we remember this and allow it to be a catalyst in our lives?

All believers lament the friends and family that don’t know, that won’t accept, that can’t get past their “selves” to see why Jesus came, lived, died and ascended. We must live lives redeemed. Lives that lose sleep over the lost, all of them. That cry at funerals, not just because someone we knew passed on, but because over 100,000 people die on a daily basis, and their introduction to Christ will be through His people, His church (the body, not the building!), us.

Jesus is not going to make the headline news on all stations, for days on end because He died for 33 people. He died for all mankind and He is on our hearts, our lips, and written into the very fabric of who we are and we are His ambassadors, the reporters of what He has done. Let us celebrate the rescue of the 33, but pray for, weep over, and reach out to the several billion who don’t recognize Him as the Son of God. The Savior of all mankind. The true Rescuer of mankind.