The story is told of a reporter in South Florida who interviewed a boy that had been attacked by an alligator. During the course of the interview, the young man told the reporter about how the alligator attacked him and how scared he was while fighting for his life. At one point during the interview, the boy showed the reporter the scars on his legs and lower body that the alligator had inflicted on him. After taking a few pictures and thanking the young man for sharing his story, the reporter commented on the fact that the boy would have those scars for the rest of his life. Hearing this comment the boy said to the reporter, “those aren’t my worst scars,” and proceeded to lift his shirt and show the reporter his bruised arms, back, and whole upper body. Fearing the worst for the child, the reporter asked him if he was being abused by someone. The little boy just smiled and said, “No sir, these are the marks my mother left on me from trying to pull me away from that alligator.”
This isn’t a new story, I remember hearing it from pulpits most of my life, but it is a good illustration of the fact that we are all in need of rescuing from time to time. Maybe you are lost while on a trip, maybe you have injured yourself and need assistance, and maybe you have wandered back into a life of sin and cannot see a way out.
We meet people every day who are in need of rescue. In the world we live in, substance abuse is running rampant and people are crying out for help every day; but it seems their cries fall on deaf ears. We meet people battling depression and other mental illnesses and write them off as being “weird” or “hard to work with.” There are those in this world who are lost and we claim that we are seeking them out, but would a lost person really know that you were trying to rescue them? In Acts 7:25, the writer shares this thought with us.
Acts 7:25
25 Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not.
Moses was God’s chosen leader for the nation of Israel, and they even had trouble seeing what he was trying to do from time to time. As God’s people, Peter tells us that we are also chosen and called out to help rescue people.
1 Peter 2:9
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
This should excite us, but I fear that at times we see this as a burden. This week let’s start living our lives in such a way that people know that we are there to rescue them.
Be Strong and Courageous,
Paul