Story
An old preaching story tells of an artist contest on the theme of peace. One canvas is a still alpine lake at dawn — glass water,…
Rest · Suffering · Hope
Psalm 46 · John 16
History
The 33 and the small hole
Copiapó mining accident, Chile, 2010
In August 2010, a mine collapsed in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Thirty-three men were trapped 2,300 feet down. For seventeen days the surface did not know they were alive. Then a drill bit came back with a note: “Estamos bien en el refugio los 33.” They lived 69 days underground — rationing tuna, organizing prayer, taking turns to lead — until a rescue capsule the width of a man’s shoulders lifted them out, one by one. Hope, for most of those weeks, was a hole you could not climb, only wait beside.
How you’d preach it
Use for Advent, for intercession, or for people who feel buried. The gospel is not that we climb out. It is that someone above us keeps drilling when we cannot see the sky.
- Hope
- Perseverance
- Prayer
Psalm 40 · Romans 8
Psalm 40:1–3; Romans 8:24–25