The cries of rescued ones

Without a doubt the most intense book I've ever read is "Endurance" It is the story of Ernest Shackleton and his men on a failed expedition to cross the continent of Antarctica from 1914 to 1916. I read this while living on the continent of Antactica which made it all the more real and harsh to imagine what these men lived through. Here's the bottom line about the book. Sub zero temperatures. Boat gets stuck and cracks in the frozen sea. They head out on foot...dragging their row boats behind. Survive eating penguins and seal blubber. Wait on floating icebergs. 28 men survive two dark winters. Sail across the one of the roughest passages in the world...in row boats. These men were amazing! They survived for 18 months on ice with very few supplies and they should've died, every single one of them. The most intense part of the book is on the last page. A third of the party had sailed ahead to find an island that housed the first known civilization, a whaling station. Each moment gets more and more intense as they are forced to outfit their worn boots with screws (makeshift crampons) and climb over glaciers and huge peaks to get to the whaling station on the other side. Not having eaten for days the men pressed on for their deliverance. As they walked into the whaling station the men stopped what they were doing as men with long hair and shaggy beards walked by, like ghosts that had been hiding out on the island. Dazed by the feel of deliverance Ernest and his men walked to a shack where the head of the station lived. As the man opened the door he did not even recognize Shackleton...his good friend. When Shackleton said his name the man turned away and wept. There is nothing more captivating to my soul than deliverance...being rescued from the jaws of death, being ripped out of a desperate situation and assured that everything is okay. David Crowder sings the words, "...the sound of rescued ones". I get chills when I sing them, because at my core I realize that I have been rescued from the jaws of death into the arms of Jesus. When we don't realize we are rescued we are not grateful for life, people, time, God, mornings, etc. I can only imagine the chills the prodigal had when he saw his father running toward him. I like to think he also turned away and wept. Deliverance! I feel it every time I walk out of a cave, when get off a scary route rock climbing, when I am nearly hit by a car that came into my lane, when a teacher decides the test I failed was too demanding, or when I get back to base camp after climbing a big peak. Our hearts cry out for deliverance. We know down deep that we have been rescued...but we get over it. Life isn't so fresh sometimes, so crisp, so new. How can we remember our desperate cries for life when we are amidst the joys and routine of "normal" life? Go back to the basics. The prodigal must remember his rebellion, Shackleton must remember the most desperate and frostbitten situation, and I must remember the feeling in the depth of the cave as I wondered what I might be like to never get out of here alive. We must remember our sin, our rebellion, and our desperate situation before we knew the arms of Jesus were so loving. Deliverance!