Everyday Salvation

Have you ever been in a situation of complete helplessness? A place where, unless a miracle happens, you’re completely stuck? I experience these kinds of situations fairly often and, no matter how hard I try to calm down, my body immediately goes into a panic. My heart races and my breathing becomes labored even though I’m completely motionless. Dripping with sweat, a tingling sensation tears across my skin as my body swings erratically between hot and cold. Some of the situations that throw me into a panic are serious, but some, like this next one, are just extremely uncomfortable.

Imagine I’m watching TV in bed one night. My right arm is immobilized in a brace to stretch out my hand and fingers. My left hand is controlling my iPhone which doubles as my TV remote. I’m controlling my TV remote via two switches connected to my phone through Bluetooth. Due to the physical weakness caused by my disability, I am effectively unable to move any part of my body except the one hand controlling my phone via the switches. Somehow my phone loses its wi-fi connection and can no longer control my TV. Being the independent person that I am, instead of using my phone to call my brother for help, I try to solve the problem myself. First I try to turn the wi-fi off and back on in my iPhone’s control center pop-up menu. Except, instead of hitting the wi-fi button, I hit the airplane mode button. In an instant, my phone is completely useless and I have no way of reaching the world outside my room or turning off my blaring TV. It’s 11pm and panic starts to set in.

After the physical panic response dies down slightly, I resign myself to trying to get some sleep despite the nearly unbearable noise of the TV. I pray that God would either help me relax and fall asleep or that He would send someone to rescue me. After watching the same show on off-road desert racing for the second agonizing time, I realize I’m not going to get any sleep. It’s 1am and the panic sets in again. Now I know why sleep depravation is a common form of torture… Then, about 15 minutes later, after I’d given up all hope, my salvation arrives. On a whim, my brother decides to check on me before going to sleep. Literally the first words out of my mouth when he walked in were, “Praise Jesus!” Finally I could get some sleep.

At my church we’ve been going through the book of Jonah. The message yesterday was about how Jonah cries out to the Lord from the cramped confines of a big fish’s belly. As the story goes, God calls Jonah to deliver a message to Nineveh. Instead of obeying God, Jonah gets on a boat and sails in the opposite direction. A violent storm hits the boat and the sailors start to think maybe Jonah has something to do with it. So, at Jonah’s insistence, they pick him up and throw him overboard. As he sinks down into the depths, probably beginning to panic as water seeps into his lungs, a great fish appears and swallows him whole. Amazed to still be alive inside the fish, Jonah praises the Lord for his overwhelming grace and vows to repent and obey Him. After three days, the giant fish vomits Jonah up onto dry land and he travels to Nineveh to deliver God’s message.

Compared to Jonah and the “Whale”, Adam and the TV is a pretty tame story. But there are some similarities: We both experienced overwhelming panic in helpless situations. And we both experienced God’s overwhelming grace in His salvation. As Christians, we often think of salvation only in terms of the Gospel. God sent His Son Jesus to pay the penalty for our sins by dying on the cross and rising again so that we could spend eternity with Him. However, we can also experience His salvation in the everyday as He rescues us from harm or helps us recover from difficult circumstances. I just get to experience everyday salvation a little more often than most.