Thirty-Three Lives and a Thousand Gifts

On August 5, 2010, the San José copper mine in Chile's Atacama Desert collapsed, trapping thirty-three miners 2,300 feet underground. The rescue that followed became a masterclass in what happens when every gift matters.

Drillers from three countries worked around the clock to bore through solid rock. NASA engineers designed a rescue capsule narrow enough to fit the shaft — just twenty-one inches wide. Nutritionists calculated exactly how to feed starving men through a four-inch supply tube without triggering deadly refeeding syndrome. Psychologists coached the miners through seventy days of darkness and mounting despair. A submarine expert designed the harness system. And the women of Camp Hope kept vigil outside the mine entrance, sustaining the families and holding the world's attention.

No single specialist could have saved those men. The driller could not counsel miners through panic. The psychologist could not cut through rock. The nutritionist could not engineer a capsule. Remove any one of them, and the rescue fails.

Paul told the Corinthians that "the eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you.'" In that Chilean desert, this truth played out before a watching world. The hand that drilled, the eye that engineered, the mouth that counseled, the heart that prayed — each was indispensable.

Your gift may feel as small as calculating calories through a four-inch tube. But in the body of Christ, there are no minor roles — only members the whole body cannot do without.