Wayne
Manning I was in a coal mine once, when I was about twelve. My dad wanted my brother and me to know what it was like, so he took us into the mine where he worked in southern West Virginia. I remember that it was cold, damp, dark, and scary. I didn’t like it much. I lived from age six through high school in a house less than a quarter mile from the mine entrance. Whenever a siren would sound at an odd time of the day or night, all our hearts would leap to our throats and nearly stop. We knew that someone’s father might not be coming out. Mine always did, but he lost a number of friends, who were the fathers of my friends, over the twenty years or so that he was a miner. Years later I took my kids through an exhibition mine not far from my old home. It was set up especially for tourists and was very safe. Yet the cold and damp and dark were still there, even if not quite as scary. I didn’t like that one much either. Even with that exposure I cannot imagine what it must have been like for those nine men trapped underground in a Pennsylvania mine last week, in low coal and water, for 77 hours. They had whatever food they had taken in for their shift, plus a stray dinner pail with a corned beef sandwich and some soda, which they shared. They had water everywhere and slowly dimming lamps. They had 240 feet of limestone, shale, coal, and dirt between them and the surface. They had each other. They had the teams working frantically above. And they had God. One
of the men, Thomas Foy, was asked how they passed the time. Foy said they
talked about "anything and everything. We can't tell you everything
we talked about, but we talked about everything. We done a lot of praying
-- that was number one. We done a lot of praying," he said. Like many of you I watched the coverage on television. When the rescue team was drilling the first escape shaft and the bit broke, I began to lose hope. My heart wanted to believe and, indeed, kept on praying, but my mind began to doubt that a rescue could happen. And then the incredible news on Saturday night that the second shaft had broken through and all nine were alive! And the even more incredible pictures as each of them were brought to the surface, one at a time, in the rescue capsule. We have no way of knowing, really, what was going on in the minds of the rescue teams as their efforts were thwarted by broken bits and ticking clocks. Whatever their doubts, their hearts and wills drove them on, and the miracle happened. The miracle, not of God’s intervention, but of God’s presence. God is always present, I believe, especially in the human spirit. God was present in the will and intelligence and persistence of the rescue teams. God was present in the tears and prayers of the waiting and watching families. And God was especially present in the collective faith of those nine men who supported and comforted each other with their words, their touch, and their prayers during the three-day ordeal. There is a great lesson for us in this event. We are fueled by God-power, we human beings. We could not draw breath if this were not so. We see in this miraculous episode what is possible when we are sufficiently focused and committed. What else might we accomplish on the planet, in our communities, in our own lives, with a sufficient recognition of the presence and power of God in every situation, every moment? What transformations would occur if we really got it that we are God’s hands, ears, eyes, and mouth in expression? “God can only do for us what God can do through us,” someone has said. I am grateful to be a witness to how powerfully God worked through those nine Somerset, Pennsylvania miners, and those who brought them out alive.
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