November 23, 2022
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It was the night before Thanksgiving. Boy, the Hutchcraft house was a busy place! We were cleaning house like crazy. Everybody - I mean all five of us cleaning house. We were decorating the house for the holiday weekend, hustling around getting ready to go get Grandma at the airport, a couple of folks in the kitchen working on one of the elements of our dinner tomorrow, including my mincemeat pie. I'm the only one who will eat it. Isn't that wonderful?
Well, I think my oldest son was about six at the time. I remember that he called to us from the top of that winding staircase that went up to his room, and his Mom went to the bottom of the stairs. And he said, "What do you want me to do with this big nail I found in my room?" And Mom said, "Just bring it down here." And so she turned away, and as she did, he slipped, tumbled down the stairs, landed head first. By the time he hit at the bottom of the stairs he was bleeding all over the place. You know about head wounds.
Well, I want you to know, there were some pretty anxious moments. We didn't know if the nail had gone into his skull. We didn't know what had caused the bleeding. Now, as it turned out, he had only hit a corner of a file cabinet at the bottom. That was bad enough. But he needed two stitches in the emergency room. Thank the Lord he was okay. But I'll tell you one thing, when he fell, the pies stopped, the decorating was forgotten. We made other arrangements for getting Grandma. No one was thinking Thanksgiving Dinner. Everybody dropped everything!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Dropping Everything For the Rescue."
Now our word for today from the Word of God. We're in Genesis 14. I'm going to begin reading at verse 11. We'll be reading about Abram and his nephew Lot. "The four kings who were making war against Sodom and Gomorrah seized all the goods from Sodom and Gomorrah and all their food; then they went away. They also carried off Abram's nephew Lot and his possessions, since he was living in Sodom."
Well, that of course enrages and concerns his Uncle Abram. And we find out "When Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive, he called out the 318 trained men born in his household and went in pursuit." By the way, they do end up engaging the enemy and they rescue Lot.
Lot had made a bad choice. He ended up living in Sodom; a place he never should have chosen. And as a result of his bad choices, he ended up in a mess. In spite of that, when he was in trouble, Abram dropped everything to rescue him. He applied all of his resources, got every man he could muster. He threw everything into helping recover a loved one in trouble.
There's a model there for you and me. When someone you love is in trouble, you do whatever it takes to rescue them. Just like our family when we changed all of our plans that Thanksgiving Eve because of one child who was in danger. Maybe someone close to you is in trouble right now; maybe not so much physical trouble like Lot, but maybe it's emotional trouble or spiritual danger.
The point is this: Have you rearranged your priorities to help bring them back, to meet their need? Maybe you're watching your marriage partner right now crying out in a lot of ways - directly or indirectly - for your love, for your time, for your attention. Maybe you have a child who is showing signs of withdrawing or wandering; making some bad choices. Don't attack them, don't nag them. Rearrange your life to be together more. Maybe you have a friend or coworker who's hurting. Or it could be you have a chance right now to return to one of your parents many of the sacrifices they made for you because they need you now.
Remember you serve a Savior who often stopped and dropped everything to meet needs. Don't wait for a crisis. It takes much less time to prevent the crash than to pick up the pieces. You may have to cancel some meetings, sacrifice some personal preferences, maybe limit your commitments, maybe rearrange your lifestyle. But someone you love...their life may depend on it and they're crying out for help. They're falling, they're hurting, they're bleeding like my son on those stairs that night.
And even if all the bleeding is inside, please drop everything to come running, and use your best resources to put that one you love back together again.