Mayor in the Flames

If you're a mayor, you're used to taking the heat. But not the flames.

But last weekend, that's exactly what Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker did. To save his next door neighbor.

Booker arrived home at his apartment to find one of his security detail knocking on the door of the building next door to warn them that the second floor was on fire. The officer managed to get two women and a man out of the building. But one of the women told the mayor and his security men that her daughter Zina was still upstairs.

With his officers holding his belt and trying to physically restrain him, the mayor got loose and ran into the burning building. Upstairs, Booker encountered a kitchen, engulfed in flames. He said, "Just as I was looking down, finding somewhere to breathe, I heard her."

He followed her voice as he heard explosions and saw "sparks flying everywhere." When he reached the room where the woman was, it was totally in flames. He picked her up over his shoulder and carried her as burning embers fell from the ceiling, burning her back and his hand.

Meanwhile, the security officers were pretty sure their mayor wasn't coming out alive. And Booker was thinking the same thing. "Every time I breathed in," he said, "I just felt a blackness. We were fighting for our lives." The mayor told reporters, "I had a conversation with God I never had before." Amazingly, Booker made it out with the woman he'd rescued - and collapsed on the ground, coughing violently.

Needless to say, news accounts hailed the mayor's incredible bravery. But his take was a little different: "I did not feel bravery. I felt terror." Which raises the question - why did he run right into those flames? His answer was to the point: "If I didn't go in, this lady's going to die."

Afraid of what might happen to him if he went in for the rescue. More afraid of what might happen to her if he didn't.

And then there's me. Ordered by my Lord - along with all of His children - to "snatch others from the fire and save them" (Jude 23). To "rescue those being led away to death" (Proverbs 24:11). But too often, afraid of what might happen to me if I try to tell them about Jesus - and letting that decide what I do. Staying silent. Holding back. Leaving them in their deadly situation.

When I've asked groups of believers what keeps us from talking to folks about our Jesus, I get the same answer, almost in unison. "Fear." "Fear of what?" I ask. The answers are all too predictable. "They might reject me"..."they might not like me"..."I might mess it up." The fears that silence us have one thing in common - they're all about me. What might happen to me.

But rescue's all about them. "If I don't go in, they're going to die."

Unfortunately, we can't actually see the horrific spiritual danger our friends and neighbors and coworkers are in. Unless we ask Jesus to help us see what He sees. Those people you see day after day are, in God's words, "lost" (Luke 19:10)..."perishing" (2 Corinthians 2:15)..."without hope and without God" (Ephesians 2:12)...and ultimately will be "shut out from the presence of the Lord" (2 Thessalonians 1:9).

Unless someone goes in for the rescue. And tells them that Jesus loves them so much that He took all that hell so they would never have to.

If the mayor had waited for the rescue professionals to do it, that woman would be dead. Had he let his fears decide...had he waited for someone who could do it better...if he'd said, "It's not up to me" - a life would have been lost. He knew what I can't afford to forget - the life in danger is in the hands of the person who's where they are. That means there's a list of people in my world for whom I am their best hope of rescue.

Because the Good News of Jesus isn't just beliefs to share. It's life-or-death information.

I don't think I'm going to ever lose the fear. But courage isn't the absence of the fear. It's the disregard of it. Because a life is at stake.