It was an amazing sight. To see 33 Chilean miners hoisted one by one from their prison 620 metres below the surface, after over two months captivity, was almost unbelievable. A rescue which few thought possible had been accomplished without a single casualty. Chile’s stock, which had been so low after years of dictatorship and misgovernment, rose higher with every miner rescued and the President beamed from ear to ear.
Each miner emerged from the rescue capsule in his own way. One bounded out to lead the cheers and present souvenir rocks to the waiting dignitaries. Another fell to his knees, clutching a Bible, and thanked God. Who could imagine what their thoughts and feelings were? Stories will emerge, some things will never be told, but only someone who had been in such a situation could even begin to understand what it must have been like.
It was remarkable how many referred in one way or another to God. How much some of the words meant, delivered in such emotionally charged circumstances, it in impossible to say. For some, no doubt, their reaction was simply a product of their religious upbringing and culture, but for others their invoking God was a statement of real faith. And who can tell what spiritual changes some of those men may have undergone during their imprisonment? In what ways may the Lord have intervened graciously in their lives as they faced the prospect of a slow, painful passage into the next life?
Remarkably, one of the miners was an evangelical preacher. For two months José Henriquez had a captive audience of 32 men. ‘What an opportunity!’ we may think. But what a challenge! Men in such a situation do not need, nor would they respond favourably to, two months of evangelistic sermons. Many would become hardened under such an onslaught. What wisdom and sensitivity José would need in order to bear a faithful, gracious wise and loving witness to his Saviour among men on the brink of eternity. He offered regular times of prayer and Bible reading, and the men responded. So often we want to force the issue with the unsaved because we know the urgency of the issues, yet we can so easily rush ahead of the Spirit of God and try to do his work for him. Grace and patience are so vital in gospel witness, not only when trapped in the depths of the earth.
A life consistent with our testimony is always essential: the world watches those claiming to be God’s people to see if their professed beliefs really affect the way they live. People are looking for authenticity – is this Christian faith real, does it stand up to the tests of life, especially the really hard experiences? How significant the witness of a Christ-like life would have been in that mineshaft. To manifest true faith, hope, love and peace in such an extremely testing environment would have needed great grace, but then our God is a God of infinite grace, well able to provide whatever his children need.
It was the apostle Paul, confined to prison, probably in Rome, facing an uncertain future, who wrote under the direction of the Holy Spirit, ‘I can do everything through him who gives me strength’ (Philippians 4:13). This was no mere theory: he was testing its truth day and daily. By God’s grace Paul could say, ‘I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation’. He wrote, not as an armchair theologian, safe in an ivory tower, but as a pioneer missionary who faced constant hardships and privations. A few years later he would sit in a deeper, darker cell from which the only exit would be death, yet he had the assurance, ‘Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day – and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing’ (II Timothy 4:8).
Who knows what God’s grace may have been doing in the depths of that Chilean mine? |
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