DAILY DEVOTIONAL – September 6, 2019
“Life in the Wreckage”
Prayer: Lord Jesus there is no measure of the endless love with which You love us; Your love that bled and died on the cross for our sins. Lord, until that day comes when we see You face to face, keep us firm and steadfast in true faith and in the joy that You have given us through Your death and resurrection. Amen.
Scripture: Luke 24:1-7
But very early on Sunday morning the women went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. 2 They found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. 3 So they went in, but they didn’t find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 As they stood there puzzled, two men suddenly appeared to them, clothed in dazzling robes.
5 The women were terrified and bowed with their faces to the ground. Then the men asked, “Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive? 6 He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead! Remember what he told you back in Galilee, 7 that the Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and that he would rise again on the third day.”
Devotion – “Life in the Wreckage”
On August 18 1987, Northwest flight 225 went down almost immediately after take-off in Romulus, Michigan. If you were around then and remember that crash, you will remember the absolute devastation of the wreckage. You probably remember thinking, “Certainly, no one was able to survive that crash.”
The plane lifted off the runway at 170 knots (195 mph, 315 km/h), and began to roll from side to side just under 50 feet (15 m) above the ground. The plane’s rate of climb was greatly reduced as a result of the flaps not being extended due to electrical failure, and approximately 2,760 feet (840 m) past the end of runway 3C, the plane’s left wing struck a light pole in an airport rental car lot. The impact caused the left wing to start disintegrating and catch fire. The plane rolled 90 degrees to the left, striking the roof of an Avis car-rental building. The plane (now uncontrolled) crashed inverted onto Middlebelt Road and struck vehicles just north of its intersection with Wick Road, killing two people on the ground in a car. It then broke apart, with the fuselage skidding across the road, disintegrating and bursting into flames as it hit a railroad overpass and the overpass of eastbound Interstate 94 (I-94).
(Citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlines_Flight_255)
As fire and rescue squads swarmed onto the scene, many were brought to their knees at the horrors their eyes beheld. As rescuers waded through the seemingly endless debris field – still smoldering from the jet-fueled inferno they had just extinguished – they were confronted with tragedy after tragedy, as each mangled chair and piece of the plane they lifted up only revealed another horrible loss of life. All hope had seemed lost, that is until a cry was heard as one fireman lifted one of the airline seats from the wreckage. After having to remove the devasted body of a deceased female passenger, the fireman saw the small body of a little 4-year-old girl. Bloody and barely conscious, but alive and still breathing.
Back on August 18th of 1993, the Baltimore Sun ran an article about the crash, marking its 6th year anniversary. (see article here: https://goo.gl/Q6pd9R) This is what the first part of the article said:
“MONDAY was the anniversary of the second-worst disaster in American aviation history. On Aug. 16, 1987, a Northwest Airlines DC-80 taking off from Detroit, en route from Boston to Arizona and ultimately to Los Angeles, showed bursts of flame near its engines, sheared off the top of a rental car building, crashed and exploded, killing all but one person on board and six others on the highway below. In all, 156 people died in the crash of Flight 255.
One of them was Paula Ciamaichela Cichan, 33, who saved the lone survivor, her daughter Cecilia, age 4.
Mrs. Cichan’s action was one of almost unimaginable selfless bravery. Realizing that the plane was going down, she unhooked her own seat belt, left her seat and went to her daughter’s, draping herself over the child.
It’s astonishing to think through this action in slow motion: Without any extra time to plan for this extraordinary contingency (the plane crashed less than one minute after takeoff), with only seconds to act, with no other rescuers around and no tools at hand beyond her own body, she did the one thing that had any chance of helping.
Using the primitive material of her own body, she in effect strapped herself as a living, human safety device over the 35-pound, four-foot form of her child. And it worked. In one of those successes that make human action and chance look divine, the child survived — with a broken leg and collarbone and burns over 30 percent of her body, breathing through a respirator in the hospital — but breathing.”
The little 4-year old girl Cecilia was later featured in a documentary called “Sole Survivor” which documented the 14 sole survivors of plane crashes in history. All grown up and married at that point, Cecilia’s new last name was Crocker. Cecilia shared that she has no recollection of the crash, but that is had still not only changed her life but defined it – as you can imagine would be the case when you are later all grown up and come to realize the amazing sacrifice your mother made to ensure your survival.
You can’t help but get a little choked up when you stop to think about what terrors went through the minds of all those passengers that day…and what was going through Paula’s mind as she draped her body around her daughter, holding her close for what I am sure she was convinced would be the last time.
As Cecilia said in the interview she gave in the documentary, there has never been a day, not one moment when Cecelia has ever questioned her mother’s love for her. Despite not being able to grow up knowing her mother as a person or getting to see her or enjoy her embrace, Cecilia still knows and feels her mother’s love for her no less than if Paula was still with here today saying “I love you.”
You know friends, Cecilia isn’t the only one that knows such a wonderful love. In fact, as heroic as Paula’s sacrifice was for her daughter, there is someone who sacrificed even more for you and for me. Like Paula, without a moment’s hesitation, our Lord Jesus Christ draped us in His perfect love and grace as He put His own sinless body in between you and I and the very wrath of God that stood against all of our sinfulness and wickedness as a humanity. Knowing full well the horrors that awaited Him, Christ willingly allowed Himself to be arrested, to let those who falsely accused Him beat and torture Him and nail His mangled body to a cross. 3 days after Jesus had died and was buried, 3 faithful women returned to the tomb to make final preparations and lay their Lord’s body to rest for good. However, much like the fireman was surprised by the miracle of life he found in the wreckage of that Northwest plane crash, these women were even more surprised by the life they had found. They went to the tomb expecting to find the dead and decaying body of Jesus…and instead they found not only an empty tomb, but a Risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Through the cross, Jesus wrapped His arms around you and I and shielded us from the certain death that our sin and rebellion against God had merited. Through His death and resurrection as the perfect Son of God, Jesus saved our life by paying for our sins and rising again from the dead to give us new life.
Like Cecilia, the destruction and devastation and wreckage that our sin has brought upon ourselves and this sinful world leaves us battered and bruised and scarred both inside and out. Yet, also like Cecilia, those scars remind us of the scars of Jesus that have healed us and brought us salvation. Though Cecilia could no longer see her mother face to face, she knew without a doubt the love of her mother because of the sacrifice she made.
Though our Lord is very much alive and Risen indeed, we cannot yet see Him face to face. However, we have no doubt of the eternal and unmatched love of our God and Lord Jesus because of His sacrifice on the cross that has given us new life, not only today, but for eternity. One day, however, we will see Jesus face to face and we will stand in the incredible Presence of the Almighty God. And, my friends, that Day is soon approaching. The Last Day when all things are brought into final judgement, and when Christ brings salvation for all who put their faith and trust in Him and the sacrifice He made for the sins of the world. The Last Day is quickly coming when we will finally be able to bow before His wonderfully scarred feet, and be embraced by His beautifully scarred hands and be welcomed into the presence of God our Father for eternity, because of the amazing love and sacrifice of God’s One and only Son Jesus. Until that glorious day, we live knowing God’s amazing love in Christ, even though we cannot yet see Him. As Peter says in 1 Peter 1:8-9, “You love him even though you have never seen him. Though you do not see him now, you trust him; and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy. 9 The reward for trusting him will be the salvation of your souls.”
God bless you my friends, and remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
