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Verse:And when he came to the den, he cried out with a lamenting voice to Daniel. The king spoke, saying to Daniel, “Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to deliver you from the lions?” —Daniel 6:20
The world was eagerly following the news from the San José mine in the Atacama Desert, northern Chile. On August 5, 2010, at 2:05 P.M., the main access to the copper mine was blocked by the collapse of about 700,000 tons of diorite rock —twice the mass of the Empire State Building. Alternative passages were blocked by fallen rock or threatened by ongoing rock movement. A group of thirty-three miners was trapped 2,300 feet underground. Emergency food supplies stocked in the shelter were intended to last only two or three days, and there was also a dangerous shortage of water and air. Would there be any survivors? Aboveground, close to the entrance of the mine, the Campamento Esperanza (Camp Hope) developed.
There, more than two thousand family members, workers, and members of the press were assisted by the local Seventh-day Adventist pastor Carlos Parra Díaz. The rescue process took much longer than expected.
After seventeen days, rescue crews broke into the mine with a six-and-a-half-inch drill bit. The miners taped a piece of paper to the drill bit.
Written in red were these words: “Estamos bien en el refugio los 33” (We are well in the shelter, the 33). Rescuers sent supplies down through the hole and drilled bigger holes. After sixty-nine days underground, all thirty-three miners were rescued in steel rescue capsules. People celebrated as each miner emerged.
At the cost of US$20 million, it was one of the most challenging mining rescue missions in history. Just as those miners were trapped in the San José mine, all humanity, through the fall of Adam and Eve, has been imprisoned in sin and condemned to die. But God developed an amazing rescue plan to save humanity.
Christ came to this world, died on the cross, rose from the dead, and consecrated “a new and living way” for us to access heaven (Hebrews 10:20).
The rescue plan is so efficient that Paul says, “Where sin abounded, grace abounded much more” (Romans 5:20).
Can you imagine the celebration when the redeemed of all ages finally enter the heavenly courts? You and I must be among the victorious rescued by God’s amazing grace!