Thirty-Three Men and a Hole Through the Rock

On August 5, 2010, seven hundred thousand tons of rock collapsed inside Chile's San Jose copper mine, sealing thirty-three miners 2,300 feet underground. They had enough food for two days. The air was suffocating, the heat unbearable, and no one on the surface knew whether they were alive.

For seventeen days, they waited. They rationed tiny spoonfuls of canned tuna. They argued bitterly about supplies, about leadership, about whether anyone was coming at all. Some prayed. Others cursed. The question that hung in that sweltering darkness was the oldest human question: Has God abandoned us?

Then on August 22, a drill bit punched through the ceiling of their refuge. The miners wept, embraced, and taped a scrap of paper to the bit: "Estamos bien en el refugio, los 33" — "We are fine in the shelter, all 33 of us." Through that narrow borehole in solid rock, rescuers sent down water, food, medicine, and letters from loved ones. Life itself flowed through stone.

At Rephidim, Israel asked the same desperate question: "Is the Lord among us or not?" They were parched, furious, ready to turn back. And God told Moses to strike the rock — not a spring, not a riverbed, but bare rock. Because the God of Israel has always brought life from the hardest, most unyielding places. The provision is already there, locked inside the stone, waiting for the moment when His people cry out.