Person-2-Person - July, 2023

“Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.” – Mother Teresa

On May 1 of this year, a single-engine Cessna plane crashed into dense undergrowth in the Colombian Amazon, taking with it three adults and four children, ages eleven months to thirteen years. After sixteen days, search crews found the plane and the bodies of the three adults but there was no sign of the children. Instead, rescuers found a baby bottle, a pair of baby shoes, and some small footprints leading away from the crash site.

Authorities launched what was called “Operation Hope” in an effort to find the missing children. It would not be an easy task. There were 1,600 miles of dense forest to search. Soldiers and dogs teamed up with Indigenous volunteers, putting their long-standing differences aside temporarily. Soldiers dropped boxes of food from helicopters, hoping the children would find it and be sustained. Finally, forty days after the crash, searchers found the children about three miles from the crash site in a small clearing in Colombia’s Caquetá province. Ironically, rescuers had come within about seventy to one hundred seventy feet of the children twice during the search and missed them. The rescue helicopter couldn’t land in the dense jungle, so the children were lifted by rope one at a time.

Colombian special forces airlifted the children to the capital, Bogotá, giving rise to headlines around the world. But amidst all the jubilation, a mystery remained, at least for folks in other parts of the world: How had the children survived? How were they alive? Rescuers found the remains of fruit and cassava flour — a local staple food — that had been aboard the plane. But how had they survived after that was gone? Gen. Pedro Sánchez, who led the search operation, said the children’s survival was the result of three factors: First, he gave them credit for their strong will to live; second, the fact that they were Indigenous, with resistance to many local dangers; and third, because of their Indigenous heritage, they knew the jungle.

The children’s family said the children ate seeds after they ran out of food that had been on the plane. They are part of the Indigenous Huitoto group, well-versed in the lore of the forest from a young age. But surviving is not the same as thriving. Gen. Sánchez said children were “. . . already very weak” when they were found, and that “. . . surely their strength was only enough to breathe or reach a small fruit to feed themselves or drink a drop of water in the jungle.” The children were weak, thin, and dehydrated when they were found.

If you’re like me, you noticed that the children survived for forty days and remembered all the times when that number appears in the Bible. The web site Biblestudy.org says the number 40 appears an astounding 146 times! I think I’m going to take their word for it. Moses lived in Egypt for forty years (Acts 7:30), and another forty in the desert (Exod. 7:7). He spent forty days on Mount Sinai, three times (Exod. 34:28-29; Deut. 9:9, 18, 25). The people of Israel spent forty years in the wilderness (Exod. 16:45). Scouts surveyed the Promised Land for forty days (Num. 13:25, 14:34). Jonah warned the city of Nineveh that God’s wrath would come in forty days (Jon. 3:4). Elijah walked for forty days on the strength of a single meal (1 King. 19:8). In the New Testament, before he began his Earthly ministry, Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness (Matt. 4:2; Luke 4:1). Then he remained on Earth for forty days after his resurrection (Acts 1:3).

The adults on the plane were killed but in the midst of death the children lived, just as we can have life in the midst of death (Psa. 23:4). Just as the land sustained the children, God can sustain us during our own trials (John 16:33). The children had their Indigenous lore to follow, and we have God’s eternal truth (Deut. 13:4). They were sustained by their intense will to live, and we are sustained by the incomparable will of God (Psa. 3:5). We might be weak, thin, and stretched to our limits, just as the children were, but God will sustain us. The God who was there for Moses, for the people of Israel, for Jonah, Elijah and the first disciples will be there for us, always and forever (Matt. 28:20). And that’s good news worth sharing.

“We also pray that you will be strengthened with all his glorious power so you will have all the endurance and patience you need. May you be filled with joy, always thanking the Father. He has enabled you to share in the inheritance that belongs to his people, who live in the light.” (Col. 1:11-12 New Living Translation.)