This morning David’s face seemed to glow with some sort of inward light as he rose to lead our communion reflection. He began reading a CNN web release:
On Friday, January 26, 2001 India celebrated Republic Day. But, just as the colorful parades got under way the continent suddenly reverberated to the worst earthquake in India’s history. Devastation reigned at the epicenter in the northern province of Gujarat, turning the city of Bhuj (150,000 people) into rubble. Hardly a building was left standing. Businesses lay in ruins. Infrastructure was torn apart. Basic services were non-existent.
While the physical damage is vividly obvious, the overwhelming human cost is yet to be counted. At this writing, tens of thousands of people lie dead or injured. Whole communities are wiped out. India’s national day will long be remembered as a day of sorrow.
Three days after the quake, on Monday, January 29th, rescuers trying to recover the body of a woman, killed under the rubble, made a startling discovery. They found an infant in her lap, covered with blood but — still alive! Three days. Still alive under the rubble. Covered in a mother’s death-blood.
We were hopelessly buried under the rubble...
David went on to remind us that we were hopelessly buried under the rubble of this fallen world till rescued in the arms of Jesus, covered by His death-blood:
But imagine if somehow in the darkness that mother had unwrapped her dead arms from around her child, and flung them wide, throwing back the heavy layers of broken concrete and bent steel. If she had burst up out of the rubble with the child safe in her arms, still covered in death-blood. The press would surely have been agog, yet this precisely what Jesus has done! Not only did he put his arms around us and save us from the pressing rubble of our fallen world, covering us in his death-blood, but on that third day, he flung back the burial rocks, and freed us from the rubble. He beat death for us — for me — for all time.
As I ate the bread and drank the wine in the family circle of believers today, I felt released anew from deep levels of rubble. I feel profoundly grateful to the One who covers us with death-blood, who holds us in His arms ... and who rolls back stones.
Out of the Rubble