Wednesday's Words for October 20, 2010

Every once in a while we are given an example of the triumph of the human spirit, of the will to help others and do the good thing. It is a display of power that no government on its own can match, and in fact I believe that power rests within the hearts of each and every one of us.

Such was the case last Wednesday when, after 69 days, Chile finally, one-by-one, rescued their trapped miners.

There had never been any doubt on the part of the rescue workers, or the families of the trapped, once it was discovered that the miners were alive, that they would be rescued. Such a rescue had never been managed, but that had no bearing whatsoever on this emergency, on this crisis, or on the way the rescue workers and family members approached this Herculean task. Not a doubt existed in their minds or in their hearts. The certainty of success engulfed them even when they had no earthly idea how it could be done.

Think about that for a moment, if you will. The rescuers and the families of the trapped miners had no idea how it could be done, yet their faith that it would be done was unshakable.

Did you know, that’s a biblical principle put into action? For those so inclined, you can look up Hebrews 11: 1.

I believe their faith that the rescue would be accomplished was instrumental in making it so. That, right there, is the triumph of the human spirit: they believed the rescue into existence.

We sometimes forget the power of our words and our thoughts; we forget that the will of many, combined, can do great things. We spend so much time in our lives concerned with minutiae, we don’t remember what we can do if we simply find the will, if we simply open ourselves up to the possibilities of accomplishment.

And then, as we received when we tuned in last Wednesday, we are given a shining example of this power that we human beings have, this great ability to envision, and to strive, and to succeed based on nothing more than sheer, audacious faith.

If you tuned in to the rescue coverage on television, if only for a little while, you couldn’t help but get tears in your eyes as each miner came to the surface, to cheers of national pride and then was enveloped into the arms not only of loved ones, but members of the rescue team and even, touchingly, the nation’s President.

The rescue was a collaborative effort with many nations taking part. I find it interesting that the country the world came to help wasn’t a super power, or a source of great wealth for the world. It was Chile, a nation small in size but mighty in spirit.

A camp had grown up at the site of the mining disaster, a camp of tents where not only rescue workers lived, but the families of the trapped came to live and to pray and to hope. They called it Camp Hope, as if in this, too, their will to succeed would meet no impediments.

The NASA team that helped to design the rescue vehicle gave it the name Escape Vehicle; the Chilean navy engineers, who built it, called it the Rescue Capsule. No one is certain how it came to b e called something else, entirely. But the name given it and which you heard it called, really speaks to this unacknowledged concept, that the words and the thoughts of the people, combined, form a most powerful force.

The vehicle the miners came to the surface in was called the Phoenix. A very fitting name, in my humble opinion.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury