The Note From Underground

On August 5, 2010, the San Jose copper mine in Chile's Atacama Desert collapsed, trapping thirty-three miners half a mile beneath the earth. For seventeen days, their families gathered at the mouth of the mine, lighting candles, clutching photographs, and slowly losing hope. Engineers drilled exploratory bore holes into the rock, but each one came back empty. Government officials quietly began discussing memorial plans. The women who kept vigil were told to prepare for the worst.

Then on August 22, a drill bit broke through into a small refuge chamber. When workers pulled the bit back to the surface, they found a scrap of paper wrapped around it in red ink: "Estamos bien en el refugio, los 33." We are fine in the shelter, all 33 of us.

The screaming and weeping that erupted at Camp Hope could be heard a mile away. Mothers collapsed. Grown men fell to their knees. They had come expecting confirmation of death and instead received an unimaginable message: they are alive.

Two women named Mary walked to a sealed tomb at dawn, carrying burial spices, prepared to anoint a body. Instead an angel met them with words that Christ still speaks over every grave, every hopeless situation, every place we have stopped expecting life: "Do not be afraid. He is not here. He is risen." Sometimes the place you go to grieve becomes the place where everything changes.