In 2018, twelve boys and one coach who was more frightened of the darkness than anyone else, were trapped in the bowels of Thailand. It was very cold, very wet, and very dark. The ancient groaning dungeons in Rome had just found a sister torture chamber. The water crept toward the rock, the blackness meeting it. The soccer team clung to each other and the clammy boulder, losing track of time and track of life.
The pale pimply white man with an unintelligible language surfaced in front of them after eighteen days. The tattered corpses still clinging to the rock watched the miracle, held their hands together in front of them, and said thank you. Their dripping, exhausted rescuer pulled out a camera and took a photo. It went viral; the world drew an audible breath of relief.
Then they made sacrifices to Buddha.
How could they have missed it? The entrance from darkness to light, from soggy hell to mother hugs, from the stench of death to sweet life—and their eyes didn’t adjust.
All the sheets pulled back, all the switches flicked down, all the grateful survivors left alone in suffocating blackness. Again.
Forgetting our heritage is destructive and blinding. We’ve been saved, bought, redeemed by grace. The very fabric of our souls relies on grace. We are His Chosen, his special people. We carry His image every day. We are the living proof of His patience. His creation. We can’t forget that.
When we forget that moment when we emerged from the tomb, the light, brilliant and healing; when we forget that moment when our pupils adjusted to the brightness and we saw the face of Christ; we’re back in the inky staleness.
And it’s like we were never able to see.
Grace-hallowed Days 
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