Tuesday, August 19, 2008
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When you work at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, you know there will be no physical link to the outside world for you between February and October. You are 840 miles from the nearest populated site and you're facing average winter temperatures of eighty below zero. Now, imagine being one of the women stationed there and discovering a lump that indicates you have breast cancer. Distant medical authorities determined that this lady must receive some emergency medical supplies. (And it really happened.) Getting those supplies, though, is easier said than done.
A U.S. Air Force plane took on the mission, flying in driving snow and limited visibility, with just enough fuel to get back, searching in that dark polar winter for a C-shaped chain of burning barrels somewhere down there in the snow. Those barrels marked the drop point. Once the life-giving supplies were dropped, the ground people had just seven minutes to collect those bundles before the cold weather damaged or destroyed their contents. It was an incredible true adventure, and it worked. The pilot for this amazing mercy mission said it was his most difficult mission. I guess! He said, "The whole thing is a loss if we don't put it where they can get it."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Life Within Their Reach."
When you're bringing a delivery that can mean life-or-death, you do whatever it takes to get it there and you put it where they can reach it. If you know Jesus, and if you know someone who doesn't, God has assigned you to a life-or-death mission. God says, "He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life." (1 John 5:12). People without the Savior who died for them are dying people according to God.
So, God clearly commands you and me to "Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter" (Proverbs 24:11). God sent His Son on the ultimate rescue mission - to give His life for people you know - so they can live forever. But "the whole thing is a loss if we don't put it where they can get it."
That's where you come in. In our word for today from the Word of God in Exodus 3:7, the Lord is telling Moses about His plans to rescue Moses' very hurting people. The Lord said, "I have indeed seen the misery of My people - I have heard them crying out - I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them." I can just hear Moses saying, "Yes! God's going to do something about the lostness of my people! All right!"
Then God says, "So now, go. I am sending you." I can just hear Moses saying, "Wait a minute here!" But God was reaching to desperate people by bringing life within their reach - by putting Moses in the middle of them - Moses, His representative. Now God says to you, speaking of the people you live close to, you work with, you go to school with, "I have seen their misery, I have heard them crying out, I am coming down to rescue them, and I am sending you."
That's why you are where you are, with the people you're with. God has dropped eternal life right in the middle of them and you are the one carrying it. And like that Air Force crew, God went to great lengths to bring them life. He went all the way to a cross on Skull Hill. Now He's trusting you to be His connection to some of the people He came and He died to rescue.
When it's life-or-death, you do whatever it takes to deliver the life. This is eternal life-or-death for someone you know. And you are life within their reach. Don't miss your mission. Don't let them miss heaven.