“I don’t have the strength anymore”

It was Sunday evening here on American soil. About the time we were starting to think about going to bed, preparing tomorrow’s breakfast, loading the coffeepots, and kissing the kids goodnight, the shock wave hit.

For thousands of folks asleep in Turkey far away across the sea, the warning rumbles began. From 11 miles below the surface, tectonic plates shifted, and the earth trembled and roared. The crust holding it all together gave way. Roads caved with giant fissures, and buildings came falling down. It was as though the mouth of hell itself had opened up, and death, it came falling from the sky, rolling up in waves from the ground.

So many buildings were destroyed; so many homes wiped out; so many citizens crushed as they slept. So very many, in fact, that according to Governor Omer Faruk Coskun, it was not possible to give the number of the dead and injured because of the widespread destruction.

It was, however, the cry of a survivor buried in the rubble that caught my ear and wrenched my heart. As the first citizens began to mobilize, stumbling about through hell’s leavings, one of them heard this issuing from somewhere beneath the debris, “I don’t have the strength anymore!”

Trapped. Powerless. Helpless to save himself. Pinned in darkness beneath that awful weight, and above him the rescuers came a-calling.

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Friend. All around us souls are crying out in distress. Enduring their own erstwhile “earthquakes,” they are trapped in addiction. Rent in two by death and loss and divorce and forsaking. Riddled with disease, depression, loneliness, despair. They are hopeless, powerless, and helpless to save themselves. Pinned in darkness beneath an awful weight, desperate for someone–anyone–to come calling with a message of hope, dying to see a Light.

“I don’t have the strength anymore!”

Those of us who have placed our faith in that great Friend of Sinners, Lord Christ, are carriers of the Light. We know we are not powerless, for the power of God Himself dwells within our earthen frames. We are not without hope, for Hope Himself lives within. We do not pay the price that despair demands, for we know what awaits us when we die.

In ourselves, we are too small and weak, but because He is in us and we are in Him, we have everything this dying world needs. We must share it.

Don’t know what to do? Just start with the person beside you. Surely, you can lean down and lift one stone at a time. With a smile, a kind word, a whispered prayer, one rock and then another and yet another is lifted away. By such simple faith and honest love, mountains, my friend, mountains are moved! And hope and life are restored.

This is not too hard for us to do, and we must do it. We are, after all, about our Father’s business. In His name, the mountains will move, and a bit of heaven will come down to this old earth.