COMMUNION MEDITATION: When you can’t chew through your crisis …

It was on the last day of the year in 1995 that The State Journal-Register of Springfield, Illinois printed a fascinating story about two men and their sinking fishing boat:

“A fishing boat sank in rough, cold waters off Vancouver Island, leaving two men in a life raft tied to the sinking boat by a nylon rope. Neither had a knife to cut the rope, and had the boat sunk, it would have pulled the raft and the men down with it. For an hour, the two men alternated chewing the rope. Minutes before the boat sank, the men finally chewed through the rope and survived.”

When you’re desperate, you sometimes do what you have to do.

I once spent a day with a trapper who was running a string of traps he set to catch foxes on a sprawling ranch in northern Arizona. No foxes were found in any of the traps, but in one trap that was sprung the trapper did find the leg of a fox. The animal had chewed its leg off to free itself from the trap.

When you’re desperate, you sometimes do what you have to do.

Literally chewing through a rope, or your leg, to save your life is pretty desperate!

We humans tend to live our lives in a way that fosters desperation. We’re reckless, not as thoughtful as we like to think we are, and hurtle ourselves through life at break-neck speed. That recklessness and lack of consideration routinely puts us in difficult situations in which we have to do some desperate things in order to avoid being “pulled under” by the consequences of our choices.

But there’s one problem we’ve caused for ourselves we can’t chew through; one trouble whose consequences have pulled us under and we would have perished if not for a savior.

That problem was our choice for sin, and it’s result of spiritual death and pending physical death.

Try as we may, we just can’t chew through that problem.

We would have been utterly lost had it not been for God sending a Savior. It’s was by Jesus Christ offering His body on the cross that the tether to sin was broken and we were freed from what would have pulled us under … forever.

Being “pulled under” by sin is beyond a desperate situation, it’s a doom that is sure without Jesus Christ. But there is the good news, it’s a doom we are redeemed from through the shed blood and broken body Jesus offered to sever us from sin and reconcile us to God.

“Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil — the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else. But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus,” Ephesians 2:1-6.

By His sacrifice, Jesus has saved us.

“Chew” on that.

Scotty