I don’t think any of us could help but feel emotionally moved by the rescue mission that took place in Chile this week. The drawing up of 33 Chilean miners, trapped a half mile below the earth for 69 days, was an exhilarating, moving, and deeply emotional experience for all involved.
One need not be a half mile below the earth to feel trapped or gripped by despair. In the case of the Chilean miners, their families were equally trapped above the earth, cut off from the ability to save their loved ones. Both the men below the earth and the families above have had to exercise tremendous faith, day by day, to continue to believe that they would be reunited at some point. They had to have faith in the people designing the rescue and supplies shafts, the workers who constructed the implements for salvation, the company that financed the operation, the government, foreign industries that assissted, neighbors and friends and family who continued to support them throughout the ordeal, and I would imagine that many found their strength in God.
The difference between having faith in all these various people and having faith in God, is that the people had specific roles to play. God did not. We can’t call Him the general contractor or the overseer. God is the One who helps us through ordeals, but that could mean the ordeal of successfully rescuing the 33 miners, which in the end it was, or it could have been the ordeal of losing them, which thankfully it wasn’t. An interesting headline in the Wall Street Journal read that the rescue effort was 75% science and 25% miracle. I disagree. I think that the rescue effort was 100% science and I believe that is was also 100% miracle. There is something profoundly riveting of people around the world joining together to help and assist one another, and in this contentious and competitive world in which we reside, this may be one of the clearest concretizations of miracle that we ever are witness to on earth.
The details of salvation are more often than not in the hands of you and me and others or other factors over which we exercise little control. But God, as the power who assures us that we can stand up to whatever challenge comes our way, is with us in multiple circumstances, joyous and sorrowful, to help us endure, grow and ultimately thrive.
It has always been of great interest to me that in our parashah, God instructs Abraham to Lekh Lekha, to go forth from his native land and from his father’s house to a land unnamed and unknown. God does not say that He would bring Abram to Canaan—He is actually silent on where the land would be. Couldn’t God have been more specific? Well, maybe not. You see, the devil is in the details, but God is in the generalities. The challenge is always to invest those details with a heavenly direction, a godly purpose, and a divine passion. And when we all work together, human beings make miracles. We did this past week, in Chile.
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