The Note From Camp Hope

On October 17, 2010, a billion people watched a television feed from the Atacama Desert in Chile. But the real moment had come weeks earlier, on August 22, when a drill bit broke through into a collapsed mine shaft half a mile underground. The rescuers pulled the bit back up and found a scrap of paper wrapped in red tape around the shaft. Scrawled in marker were the words: "Estamos bien en el refugio los 33" — We are well in the shelter, all 33 of us.

The engineer who read it first began to shake. He handed it to the shift supervisor. The supervisor walked to the cluster of tents where families had been camped for seventeen days, refusing to leave, refusing to stop hoping. He held the note above his head. One woman screamed. Then another. Then the entire camp erupted — weeping, embracing, falling to their knees in the dust.

No one cared what the messenger looked like. No one asked about his credentials. He carried proof that the lost were alive, and that was enough.

Isaiah saw this scene three thousand years before it happened. The watchmen on the walls, crying out together. The beautiful feet of the one who brings good news. The moment when all the ends of the earth see the salvation of the Almighty. Every gospel announcement is that note from below — the dead are alive, the lost are found, and your God reigns.