It's hard to stop watching what's happening in Haiti. The days I've spent ministering among those precious people have bonded my heart to that place, and broken my heart for what I'm seeing. Time is running out in Haiti. There will be years to rebuild, but only hours to rescue. Who can wait for the professional rescuers or the right equipment?
Like Bea, that 13-year-old girl, pinned under the ruins of a school, with no trained rescuers on the ground at the time. I watched as everyone around began to dig desperately through the rubble, and they brought her out alive.
And there was Winnie, a precious little baby. A couple of passersby thought they heard a cry from under a collapsed building. At risk to his own life, a taxi driver climbed into the wreckage to try to free her. Thank God, Winnie's rescue is a ray of hope in all the sadness that is in Haiti.
As I write this, a Los Angeles search and rescue team is going deep inside a fallen day care center, believing a 10-year-old girl may still be hanging on beneath all that concrete. If there is an aftershock, the rescuers' own lives could be in jeopardy. They know that; still, they're digging.
Rescue. I've been hearing the word and seeing the images all day long. Praying for the ones whose only hope is a rescue. And for those who are desperately looking for them. In the rescue work in Haiti, I'm also seeing my life, and my life's work, because Jesus isn't a religion to me. He's the One who came to rescue me from a deadly situation I could never have escaped myself. Not just at the risk of His life, but at the cost of His life. Jesus said He had left heaven and come to our world "to seek and save what was lost" (Luke 19:10).
You can see people who are dying physically. You can't see a soul dying. But the Bible says, "The soul who sins will die" (Ezekiel 18:4). I'm a soul who's sinned, countless times. All of us are. And the dying isn't my heart beating its last. It's forever separation from the Source of all life and all love - the God who made us for Himself. He puts it this way: "Your sins have separated you from your God" (Isaiah 59:2); the payoff for a life of hijacking my life from my Creator is to be "shut out from the presence of the Lord" (2 Thessalonians 1:9).
But years ago, Jesus rescued me. Only He could, because only He "carried our sins in His body" when He died on the cross for me (1 Peter 2:24). He died! He shouldn't have. I should have. But He died. The price of my rescue and yours.
When I see those people who were about to die, clinging desperately to the rescuer who's come for them, I see myself clinging to Jesus as my only hope, as my Rescuer from my sin and my hell. The Bible says "whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). That's whoever.
When I see those people doing whatever it takes to bring out a dying person, I want that to be me. I want it to be every one of my brothers and sisters who've been rescued by Jesus. Because whoever is within reach of the person in danger is the one who's in a position to save them. We've been rescued to be rescuers; to "rescue those who are being led away to death" (Proverbs 24:11). For Jesus has asked you and me to join Him in digging through the rubble to save a life forever. Like those rescuers looking right now for that 10-year-old girl, disregarding the fears of what might happen to us if we go in, but because of the greater fear of what will happen if they don't.
In Haiti...in our own personal worlds, the only hope is rescue.