The New York Times online has short videos on top stories, and today there's a story about a subway worker on the large 2nd Avenue subway line project who got caught 100 feet under the streets of New York in some freezing cold muck that drew him down like quicksand with such a powerful suction that simply pulling him out would seriously injure him. Rescue teams went to great lengths, some of whom became stuck themselves, to get the man free. The video shows pictures of him emerging from the deep, dark hole, limp and dirty, in the arms of his rescuers.
The words of John Newton's well known hymn come to mind: "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, to save a wretch like me." There are so many stories in life about being lost and then found. Being trapped and then freed. Of going wrong and then turning around right. Of dying and then discovering new life. There are many ways to illustrate God's deliverance. Even today - the first day of spring - is a wonderful yearly illustration of how new life always comes around again.
I can tell you, if I were sucked into dirty, deadly, freezing muck 100 feet below ground, further trapped, as that man was, by a piece of plywood that had fallen in the muck with me, I know I would been screaming out, "Help, God!" If the ordeal were to go on for hours and hours, as it did for him, I would be crying, wimpering, sobbing "Help, God!" over and over. Thank God that on this first day of spring the rescue workers were able to bring him back above ground alive. The story could have had a much different ending if the man had gone face under instead of being kept above water by his rescuers for all that time. Sometimes stories like this don't have such a happy ending.
But Paul assures his readers in Rome, "Everyone who calls, 'Help, God!' gets help."
I had a discussion with a young Pentecostal man recently who is going through a very challenging time in life. Believe me when I say that his is not a happy ending story, not in near sight, anyway. Yet, despite this, he is trusting God, heart and soul as he takes it one day at a time. And I was really moved when he told me that he feels Jesus helping him through all this, even though progress seems painfully slow. He said, "I just keep praying for help all the time. Because, you know, I haven't seen one story anywhere in the Bible in which someone asks Jesus for help and he turns them away and says no, I can't help you buddy. I know that if I'm asking for help, I'm already getting help. I've got to trust that I'm saved."
"No one who trusts God like this - heart and soul - will ever regret it," Paul writes. "Everyone who calls, 'Help, God!' gets help."
Today's readings: Jer. 24:1-10; Rom. 9:19-33; John 9:1-17
Elsa is praying the daily readings and praying the news and blogging about it on the weekdays of Lent.
She is reading The Message translation this year.
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