The Boys Who Were Carried Through the Water

In June 2018, twelve boys and their soccer coach crawled into the Tham Luang cave in northern Thailand. Monsoon rains flooded the passages behind them. For seventeen days, the world held its breath while the Wild Boars sat trapped on a muddy ledge, two and a half miles inside a mountain.

When the rescue came, it did not come by draining the water. The boys had to go through it. Thai Navy SEALs sedated each child, sealed him in a wetsuit, strapped a full-face mask over his mouth, and carried him — unconscious and breathing — through flooded tunnels so narrow that divers could barely fit. Each boy passed through the very water that threatened to kill him, cradled in the arms of someone strong enough to navigate the darkness.

Every single one emerged alive on the other side.

Peter tells us that the floodwaters in Noah's day were not merely judgment — they were a passage. The ark carried eight souls through the water that destroyed the old world and into a new one. And baptism, Peter says, works the same way. Not as a bath for the body, but as the pledge of a clear conscience before the Almighty, made possible because Christ — the Righteous One — went under death's waters for the unrighteous and came out alive on the other side.

We do not save ourselves. We are carried through.