Marketplace Monastics

Copiapo Mining Disaster, by desert_atacama, Wikipedia, by permission

Still faint and sick with hunger, now racked with discomfort and pain, still knowing that they might be living in their own tomb, the 33 Chilean miners heard and then saw the first drill bit break through. Now there would by communication with the surface.  Now, at least, those 33 men knew that those they loved had not given up on them.

            They were nearly too weak to rejoice, but in all the despair and the fear that had swamped their hearts, at least they knew, somebody cared. Somebody had not given up.

            That, my friends, is you and that is me.  Those for whom we pray may not even know we are praying, just as those 33 captives did not know how many people, and at that point people all around the world, were following their story, praying for them, hoping against hope to see them emerge, somehow and someday soon.  They could not have known … they did not know for weeks … if anyone was still on the site or making any attempt.  

            Thank God Maria Segovia did not keep quiet.  Thank God those families pitched their tents outside the fences and would not go home.

            The story of the 33 continues, but we know they were evacuated.  How about your 33?  And mine? Will we camp out at the Throne of Grace, worshiping and praying, until they are FREE??

Sadness at the Beach, Wikipedia by permission, by tellmeimok, image of profound sadness

If you began reading these excerpts on August 5^th, the day of the collapse, and if you have followed the story thus far, August 22^nd would have been a day of record in the chronology of the story, for on that day one of the drills, others having missed the exact location of the miners, broke through.

            If we could take ourselves back just to the first day and imagine living since the beginning of the month in darkness, starvation, fear, and mortal danger, we would have the smallest idea of how weak and hungry and forsaken those men felt.

            For the first many days, pressing their ears to the rock and standing beneath the chimneys, no sound of drilling was heard.  Sometimes they thought, even in the earliest days when no drilling had begun, that they heard something, somewhere, that somehow engineers were working to discover them, but that hope was vanishing.

            Breakthrough.  Seventeen days of waiting and diminishing in the dark.  These men were not fools concerning their condition.  When at last they did hear the unmistakable sound of help coming toward them, it ceased.  Would their rescuers ever locate them?  Would food be able to be lowered?  When the first drill head broke through, their joy was tremendous, but their fears were not undone.  That first hole was barely larger than a fist.  If bigger drills could increase the size of that bore hole, which would take a mighty drill, bigger and more powerful than they had ever used, it would take months to make it big enough and safe enough for them to escape.  And how?  They would suffocate being hauled half a mile to the top by a rope through such a narrow vein.

Their story, Deep, Down, Dark, written by Hector Tobar under their authority and approved by all 33, recounts this moment of breakthrough, that it was for them both elation and dire fear.  They knew they were passing into stages of death and they knew and were told that, even with some food able to reach them, that it would be December before there could be any hope of rescue.

I wanted to record this date, to give an idea of how long they lived without any outside help, but their trial in some ways was just beginning.  When I read the book, I knew, of course, that they had been rescued, but their ordeal was gripping, start to finish, so I am going to continue their story.  

Breakthrough.  Some of those for whom we pray may be experiencing breakthrough even now, and even now, they might be frightened and reluctant to believe.  “Could a loving God ever really love me?”  “Could a righteous God ever really receive me?”  “Could any sacrifice atone for all that I’ve done?”  Deep … down … dark … and apart from The Way Out, doomed.

As we pray for our 33, today and as we go along, we need to remember that, in darkness and weakness and despair, believing can be frightening.  Many have cowered in spiritual hunger and fear and asked, “If Jesus Christ is my only means of escape, what if He cannot or will not reach out and take my hand?  What if I am too wretched?  What if He leaves me behind?”  In prayer, we may be drilling through generations of lies and guilt and fear.  We can pray these words on behalf of those we know who dwell in darkness, as perhaps we have done for ourselves in the past.  In our liberty, we can rise up to our feet and pray aloud … “O Lord, You have searched them and known them … You are aware of all their ways … their darkness is as light to You! … You understand and You care!”

O LORD, You have searched me and known me.

You know when I sit and when I rise; You understand my thoughts from afar.

You search out my path and my lying down; You are aware of all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue, You know all about it, O LORD.

You hem me in behind and before; You have laid Your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.

Where can I go to escape Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence?

If I ascend to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, You are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle by the farthest sea,

even there Your hand will guide me; Your right hand will hold me fast.

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me, and the light become night around me”—

even the darkness is not dark to You, but the night shines like the day,

for darkness is as light to You.

(Psalm 139:2, ESV)

German Black Forest Rescue Training, René Kieselmann (Bergwacht Schwarzwald e.V., BWS), by permission, Wikipedia

The 33 men trapped underground were as different from one another as might be any group of men facing a disaster.  They were all miners, although one or two had never worked on the rock, they all had their fears and guilts and desires, their lives were similar in their corner of the world, proud Chileans, except one Bolivian, all considered tough and capable enough to earn a living in a grinding and grueling way.

            Yet, as we meet them in the account of their entombment, it seems likely that anyone who wished to obtain their trust or be honored to know their deepest thoughts, would have to get to know them each, differently.  Some were delicate in their souls, some bombastic, some more spiritual, some very bitter, some buoyant.  Just like the panoply of the people you and I know.

            If you or I were to “rescue” one or two of those men in their hearts, befriend them from afar while they lived beneath the earth, their lives ebbing away physically and emotionally, how would we do it?

            Even more than that, what if we were praying for them, individually, and by the grace of God hitting upon the Lord’s provision for their deepest needs?  How would we begin to chip away at the rocky tombs that housed their hearts?  What would we ask for, on their behalf?

            Some things come immediately to mind, but we often and often quickly grow weary in prayer when we feel we are just parroting the same plea … even though tapping away at the largest rock will eventually whittle it down.

            There are, perhaps, two considerations.  

One … persistence matters when breaking through rock … and fear … and unbelief.

Two … it’s better to use the right equipment.  In the mines, a drill is more useful than a plastic spoon.  Let’s explore, next time, and with a spotlight on one of those waiting and hoping on the surface.

“Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?” (Isaiah 58:6)

Slaves working in a mine. Painting on Corinthian terracotta plaque, 5th century BC. J-C., wikipedia, public domain, faithful depiction of two-dimensional works, Huesca

There is, in Scripture, an account we ought perhaps to explore as we pray for our “33”.  There was a company of men of Israel who, on an awful occasion, cried man-tears as if their hearts would break.

            It happened at Ziklag and told in 1 Samuel 30.  David and his men had been helping Achish win battles, but when they returned to their families, the Amalekites had plundered the area and had taken away their wives and children, all, every single one.  The men, David among them, probably somewhat wearied after long weeks of battle, were distraught and began to weep, and they cried until they hadn’t strength enough to cry any longer.  Sometimes I try to imagine what that would have been like, what that looked like and sounded like, 600 men sobbing and wailing in anguish … and I can’t, really.

            Then, they turned on David “each one was bitter in spirit because of his sons and daughters,”  but … and here is one of those great messages of Scripture … David said to Abiathar the priest, “Bring me the ephod,” and then David covered himself with it and cried out to the Lord.

            The ephod was one of the primary symbols of the priests’ pastoral care and of God’s love, for the people.  On it were representative gems, one each for all twelve tribes of Israel.  

            There, under the ephod, “David strengthened himself in the Lord.”

            That is not at all the end of the story.  When David knew the Lord’s directive, he led those men, except for some that stayed behind with their supplies, into the camp and there they slaughtered all except 400 who “escaped on camels.”  It is probably correct to imagine a very great company, if only 400 escaped.    What’s more, besides their dear wives and children, they brought back everything that had been taken.  Not one item was left behind.

            It is particularly important, for a deeper understanding of what happened that day, to know that there was a special reference to Amalek in the Bible.  Amalek is said to be at war forever against God, and He against them.  “The power of the Lord’s banner! The Lord is at war with Amalek in every generation.” (Exodus 17:16)

            “Remember what Amalek did to you on the way when you came out of Egypt, how he confronted you on the way and attacked among you all the stragglers at your rear when you were tired and weary; and he did not fear God.” (Deuteronomy 25:17-18)   Oh, Lord God, we know some stragglers, under awful attack!

            They have said, “Come, and let’s wipe them out as a nation, so that the name of Israel will no longer be remembered.” (Psalms 83:4) 

            “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Write this in a book as a memorial and recite it to Joshua, that I will utterly wipe out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.’ And Moses built an altar and named it The Lord is My Banner; and he said, ‘Because the Lord has sworn, the Lord will have war against Amalek from generation to generation.’” (Exodus 17:14-16)

            “Amalek was first among nations, but its end is utter destruction.”  (Numbers 24:20

            The Amalekites were the people who would not cease their wars against Israel, and some of our 33, some since before they could understand it, have suffered the torments of hell, accusing spirits, depressions, fears, that they do not know how to battle, thoughts and perversions that have wounded them since childhood.

            Ours it is to cross the valley and rout those enemies, if we will love them as our own … even better, if we will love them as the Lord’s own.  

            Perhaps you know of some who have already died; I do.  I knew a ten year-old boy, the son of dear friends, who committed suicide.  A “bad” boy?  No, a tormented boy.

            Significantly, David was as distressed as all the other men, but David “did something.”  Not a rash something … he brought himself under the priestly ephod and waited upon the Lord.  Then … he pursued and prevailed.

            Is it too much to say, or is it bang in the gold, that as much, if not more, than the Amalekites hated Israel, the enemy of souls hates the born-again people of God – and their children?

            For our 33, for those we know and love who are trapped, deep down, in the dark, we pursue.

            

A grief stricken American infantryman whose buddy has been killed in action is comforted by another soldier. In the background a corpsman methodically fills out casualty tags, Haktong-ni area, Korea. August 28, 1950. Sfc. Al Chang. PD-USGov-Military-Army, on Wikipedia

One of the older men, Omar Reygadas, was also one of the first to come to terms with his destiny and the pain in his heart.  When Jesus wrote in the earth at the occasion of the Pharisees delivering up the woman caught in adultery, they began to walk away, from the oldest to the youngest.  I’ve always wondered if, perhaps, what He wrote was the most difficult to bear for those with the most years of sinfulness in the ledgers of their souls.  This older man, Omar Reygadas, on the second day under the earth, walked off alone – one of the most strictly observed rules for miners: no man goes anywhere alone.  A man could slip into a chasm with no one to know where he was, or a rock could fall on him and render him unconscious, with no one to go for help.

            Omar quietly slipped away.  He couldn’t be in more danger than he was, and he needed time alone with his thoughts and with the Lord.  He said later that he, unashamedly, began to weep and weep, to cry like a little boy, and you and I can picture man tears, which are stultifying when we see them.  Men weeping like that make us want to hide our faces.  After a little while, he wiped his tears and made a man-decision.  He would go back to the others, and he would be as strengthening and helpful and encouraging to them as he could be, for as many days as they had left.

            Call your 33 friends to mind, the 33 people whom you know are hidden or trapped in some darkness, if only a little darkness in one little corner of their lives.  The young married woman who finds her new husband more disappointing than she had imagined, less able to meet all her needs, unconsciously moving her marriage closer and closer to divorce.  The friend you’ve known for years who really cannot abide the neighbor’s children.  The young man you’ve long feared who would end up in trouble, and who did.  There is something to be said for the tears we shed for them.  I will speak of that again, but with or without tears, can we begin to allow our compassion to go as deep as their darkness?  We will have to exercise it, not just feel it.  We will have to dig and keep digging, and our hearts will suffer the trowel of our prayers, if we are willing to care deeply.

Casa de Cultura, Copiapo, Chile, by permission, Wikipedia, Sfs90 (The civic center of the mining town where many of the 33 lived)

Of the many poignant accounts in the narrative of the Chilean mining disaster, one of the most gripping is the play of thought that the miners suffered as their condition and their plight continued to roll over them, penetrating their minds and souls and wounding them to the core.

            Today, where I live, there is a cool, cool breeze and the skies are dove grey.  It’s the middle of August, and our temperatures have been in triple digits for days.  Today is like the early effects of autumn, and it is DELIGHTFUL.  No rain yet, just a cool, refreshing, heartening change, a thirty degree drop on the thermometer.

            In the San Jose, it was always hot and hotter.  Dangerously hot.  By the end of the first day, all the men were sweaty and smelly and now, more than ever before, gritty and blasted.  And that is how they would stay.  The precious water they had could not be used for bathing … although one of them had typically rinsed off in it “before,” that is, before they knew they would all be drinking it.

            The men fell asleep, thinking of all the “never again” moments of their lives.  Never again to walk through an open door onto a patio, never again to light up a barbeque, to join the guys for beer or something harder at the local bars, never again to see their wives, their children, never to meet their unborn children and grandchildren, for several of them.  Never again to feel any breeze on their faces.  Their lives were hard, the landscape was hard, their thoughts were often hard, but in such a world it does not take much to engender delight.  No more delight.  No more anything except waiting for death or maybe, somehow, don’t get your hopes up, a miraculous delivery.  They had, almost all of them, been underground or related to those who were, for too long to imagine that any drill could reach them before it was TOO LATE.  It had taken ten years for them to get where they were.

            There is much more to this story, as you can imagine.  So much to tell.  So very many parallels to your life and mine, every day.  Certainly, so many reminders that there are those in our lives who live in a place where they are just waiting for death, and afraid of it.  For some, no more delight, or very little, very seldom.

            And so, we dig.

            The dust was a terrible problem in the mine as well.  It was so thick it was actually gravel-ly.  When the worst of the rumblings and groanings began resonating in the caverns of the pit and the men endeavored to drive out, piling two dozen to a truck, the drivers could not see to drive or back out and kept running into the walls.  This is when panic set in.

            When the “mega-block” fell, there was a percussive effect that was like having your ears plug up in an airplane, and more painful.  They lost hearing for long minutes, except for one or two that were closed up in the cabs of loaders and other equipment.  Responding to gestures from the men on the ramp, they opened their doors and the sound wave hit them like a sonic blast.  Men were blown off their feet by the force of it.  The noise was, as they said later, as if an enormous building had fallen flat in front of them.

            There had been warnings.  Several men had noticed a two-inch crack in the ramp, the road leading in and out.  This was an ominous sign, for the ramp wasn’t contrived; it was carved out of the rock.  Several men were going to report that fissure as soon as they got up and out for lunch.  One man said, “That’s it.  This place is too dangerous, and I’m turning in my papers.”

            As we’ve mentioned, the mine had been so full of groanings that day that they were saying to each other, “La mina esta llorando mucho!” … The mine is crying a lot! … a phrase they used when the usual odd sounds turned to groans.

            One of the most compelling stories of the pre-collapse morning was that two men were traveling on the ramp in a truck and one of them cried out, “Look!  A white butterfly!”  Butterflies hardly exist in that desert to begin with, and never in the belly of the mine.  His partner said, “No way!  You’ve got to be mistaken,” but the first insisted and told the others when they returned to the floor.   

            Warnings.  Of those we pray for, those who have stepped into darkness or have been overcome by darkness, there were warnings, but there must also be grace to heed them and liberty enough to take action.  Some of our 33 know little of grace or liberty.

            Supposing we spend some time today and over the weekend and in the days ahead, and commit ourselves to a little listening, so that what warnings we need to hear will be heard.  How to pray.  What they need.  What the really need! The angry mother often needs comfort more than patience and hope more than self-control. On their behalf and for their sake, and for our own as servants of the Most High God, we are remembering that when we are called to Jesus Christ, we are called to His intercession, and the intercession of the Spirit goes down, deep, into the dark.

A massive sand storm cloud is close to enveloping a military camp as it rolls over Al Asad, Iraq, just before nightfall on April 27, 2005. DoD photo by Cpl. Alicia M. Garcia, U.S. Marine Corps. (Released) By permission, United States Marine Corps, Wikipedia

AFAD Van Kurtama, by permission, Wikipedia, Search and Rescue, Turkey

We will return to the 33 and their first hours and days underground, and to the many things taking place that are as parables to their story, but what of those on the top?  

            The mining officials did nothing all that first night while the dust continued to pour out of the earth.  The few feeble attempts to enter and size up the situation were cruelly hampered.  No one alerted the government or the media or the families, at first.  One of the first to get news was the girlfriend of a miner who was married to another woman … the girlfriend had a relative who had heard from someone else that the mine had failed.

            Word began to spread, and family members all began to gather at the site.  One woman wasn’t even sure which mine (there are several) was the one where her husband worked and hoped his job was elsewhere.  The first news bulletins, “trapped, with no way out,” was something mining families knew all about.  They knew the stories of men left to die in caverns too deep and inaccessible to bother to try to rescue them.

            Quite a few of the miners had been trapped before by rockfalls that took a day or more to clear, usually only a matter of hours with front-loaders and truck.  This was not that, but no one on the surface knew it yet.  

            Before long, the wives and mothers, children, siblings of those 33 men began to gather.  First, just one, then a handful, then more and more as news traveled up and down Chile and around the world.  Those families just would not tolerate the inactivity.  “Do something!”, which is often a plaintive cry, was more than that at San Jose.  “Do something!”  Their pleas began to rise into a riot of insistence … “Do something!”

            There was nothing that could be done.  All the veterans of mining experience knew it, and within days, as we will see, they had better than good reason to “abandon all hope.”  

            Is there even one person in your life for whom you have abandoned hope, or nearly?  Maybe by faith you still pray, still keep a positive outlook, but … I will speak of myself … am I digging? Am I drilling?  Am I determined, “I am going to reach them, by the Spirit of God!”

            This is doctrinally “tricky.”  It is God Who will help them!  He will ride on the wings of darkness and come to them!   He will thunder from heaven, His voice will resound!  (Psalm 18) At the same time, He told us to pray, to persevere, and if we stay the course for ourselves, certainly for others as well.  If He gave them to us to love, surely they are given into our spiritual watch-care as well, and if we have faith that they may lack, we “Do something!”  

            In the end, the outcome in which we rejoice for those 33 was affected by experts.  I am certainly not an “expert” in prayer and intercession, but you and I might have more expertise than we know or have been putting to use.

Edvard Munch, The Kiss, Wikipedia, by permission, public domain, death of the artist

This is getting a bit Scheherazade-ish in the telling, but wait again for all that was going on outside the mine …

            I want to take you back to that morning of the cave-in. 

            One of the miners, heading out the door, came back, took his wife in his arms, and held her tight, seeming not to wish to let her go.

            Another miner went off to work without a kiss, because his wife was angry with him.

            Another frequently reminded his wife of the papers she would need if ever a tragedy occurred.

            For another, August 5, 2010 was his first day on the job.

            There were so many stories; stories of teenage sons stepping up to take the place of their fathers while the rescue attempts went forward, stories of a sister who was as faithful as any wife in her vigil, stories of government officials, spending time and money on what they believed to be an utterly hopeless effort.

            All of these anecdotes remind us as we pray, that life doesn’t always give us a heads’ up before disaster strikes, but if we will walk with the Lord, we will never be undone and never be put to shame.  There is probably much more preparation in our lives than ever we acknowledge, and the wise listen and take heed, waiting upon the Lord.

            Those we know who find themselves in darkness, or who discover a dark place in their hearts, nearly always had or were given warning, but the warning to us is this, that wherever they are and in whatever danger they are found, God knows them.  He knows exactly, precisely where they are in their faith or unbelief, in their pain, in their hope or the loss of any hope they may have had.  He knows . . . He can reach them.  We must trust that, if He wants us to come with Him as He “drills” down into their captivity, it matters that we take up the massive power of His Word and begin to chip away at the slab of deception that bars the way of their escape.

Entrance to a uranium mine, Matt Affloter, by permission, Wikipedia

Among those who watched and waited, upon whom the reality of the collapse inside the mountain was dawning, fear and dread and terror was nearly as great as it was for those down below.

            As with the 33, both the immediate and the slow reckoning of the event broke upon them in waves.  On the outside, the billows of dust exploding from the entrance was like nothing they had ever seen before.  It was not unusual for dust to gush out when rocks would fall or when blasting occurred, but this was different and horrifying.  The dust cloud kept belching out, too thick to penetrate, as much as if the dust of centuries, disturbed, was fleeing to the open air.

            At first, only a few administrators and office workers stood outside their building, gazing in panic as the dust continued to pour from the entrance.  Some were already weeping.  The mine was a distance from town, but the dust cloud could be seen far off and by evening, when the absence of the miners at home became conspicuous (it wasn’t unusual for some of them to stop for a beer on the way home,) families began to arrive at the mine and to grasp what had happened.  Very little information had come to them; they came to the mine.

            “What are you going to do?”  “Where are the drills and the trucks?”  A few of the superiors had covered their faces as best they could and had endeavored to enter through the dust.  Given what they saw from the outside, they had already begun to realize that any typical rescue effort involving heavy equipment to move rock and haul it away, would be massive, take weeks to accomplish, and could not be successful.   Then, when at last they reached the section of the fallen slab, they knew that their friends, their co-workers, were lost … unless one believed in miracles and unless they got one, a miracle too big for the hope of those seasoned men.

            Wait another day for an account of the early persistence of a few … but let’s consider today how true it is that we look sometimes upon mental and emotional illnesses, frightened and hardened hearts, deadly cold unbelief, as well as demonic bondage, and all we feel we can do … is weep.  We have seen how unavailing have been all the attempts to help and how immovable is the enemy that bars the way.  The deceptions of the enemy of souls stands between those we love and their deliverance, as immovable as was that gigantic piece of fallen mountain. His lies and bands of fear defy any help or rescue. Are we asking for a miracle too big?  We see the obstacles, and we weep .