The Miner's Lamp

In 2010, thirty-three Chilean miners sat trapped 2,300 feet beneath the Atacama Desert after a catastrophic collapse sealed the main shaft of the San Jose mine. For seventeen days, the world assumed they were dead. The men rationed two days' worth of food across more than two weeks, huddled in a humid refuge chamber no larger than a studio apartment. They scratched messages on scraps of paper, folded them into tiny capsules, and attached them to every exploratory drill bit that punched through the rock above — desperate words flung upward into darkness, not knowing if anyone would ever read them.

On the seventeenth day, a drill bit broke through into their chamber. Wrapped around it when it was pulled back to the surface was a single note in red ink: "Estamos bien en el refugio, los 33." We are well in the shelter, all 33 of us.

The entire nation wept.

That is the cry of Psalm 130 — a voice calling upward from the depths, not because rescue is guaranteed, but because the One above is listening. "Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord. Lord, hear my voice." The psalmist doesn't pretend the shaft isn't dark. He doesn't minimize the weight of the stone overhead. He simply sends his words upward and waits, because he knows that with the Almighty there is unfailing love, and with Him is full redemption. The drill bit always comes.