The Navy SEAL team crept through the woods with one goal in mind.
Rescue the hostage.
They slipped into the water of the swamp surrounding the enemy’s camp. One shot the guard on the pier while another caught his body and carefully lowered it into the murky water without a single splash.
They moved closer into enemy territory, searching for the CIA operative, hoping she was still alive.
Enemy soldiers rushed toward them, around corners, shooting through windows. And still they pressed forward, their goal in sight.
As one team member gently reassured her and picked up her beaten and bruised body, other team members pushed the enemy back.
The SEAL team got out of camp with the enemy’s gunfire zinging all around them. The enemy wasn’t going to give her up without a fight.
And neither was the SEAL team, because she was worth rescuing.
This rescue scene in Act of Valor always leaves me tense and breathless, even though I’ve seen it a thousand times. Honestly, it’s the only part of the movie I’ve seen because my husband (who LOVES this movie) calls me in to watch it every time he watches the movie. The last 5 minutes are glorious because it ends with the enemy’s truck looking like huge chunks of Swiss cheese.
But it also leaves me breathless because it is an example of how God rescues us from darkness. Before we ever whisper God, please save me, before we see that we need to be rescued, an intricate back story has taken place. A back story that involved the greatest rescue mission ever.
It’s a back story that sounds like a movie plot. A war between good and evil, between the Creator of the Universe and His enemy who desperately wants to rule that same Universe. But it’s better than any movie plot because it’s real.
God created this beautiful world, and created man and woman, made in His image. He put in the human race a need for relationship, connection, belonging.
Then God’s enemy turned His people against Him.
And even in the messy, sorrowful aftermath, God promised to send One who would crush the head of evil. With those words God breathed a whisper of hope, a promise of a rescue.
Through all the years God reminded His people. He whispered words of hope, words of Someone who was coming to save them.
He planned the greatest rescue mission ever.
Light broke into the darkness with an impossibility, a virgin with child. Its beacon was a bright star, and the Rescuer was a baby. God didn’t go in with guns blazing, but as the most vulnerable of all creatures.
Everything changed when the light broke into the darkness. The people who were looking for Jesus to come saw the beginning of the fulfillment of God’s whisper of hope. The greatest rescue began with His birth that night in Bethlehem and progressed in His death on the cross, and was complete when He rose from the dead, bringing peace.
Not peace between good and evil, but peace between God and the people He created. This rescue mission was to get His creation, His beloved, out of the enemy’s hold.
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Where are you today? Does the thought of being rescued and having peace with God seem far-fetched? Do you feel you are too far gone, out of God’s reach?
Let this crazy truth sink in. Jesus left the perfection of heaven, stepped into time and history to carry out this rescue mission with you in mind.
You are loved by God, made in His image, made for connection, belonging, and love.
You are worth fighting for and you were made to live in the light.