Ron Hutchcraft Ministries - Radiation Rescuers

World events - even ones as tragic and dramatic as Japan's quake / tsunami / nuclear emergency - tend to get pushed off the front page by the next big story. And these days, there's a next big story just about every day.

But I'm thinking about those workers at those damaged nuclear power plants. They have to know what's happening to their bodies and their futures as they work in that radiating place. But they also know that lives are at stake in their efforts to contain the invisible killer that leaks from those plants. So they risk it all.

That shames me when I think of the times I've chickened out on my life-saving assignment because I was afraid something bad might happen to me. They might not like me as much. I might goof it up or be written off as a Jesus-freak. No - no danger of my losing my life. Maybe just losing a little personal ground.

I remember a visit to the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial a few years ago. I was privileged to go there with a police officer who had been one of the first responders that awful day, when so many innocent victims died in that explosion and its aftermath. My friend told me about how the rescuers ran into that building, knowing that they were the only hope for some trapped survivors. But they weren't without fear. Looking at the precarious structure above them, my friend said to his chief, "I think we're going to die here." His chief replied, "Then it's a good day to die - and a good way to die."

I drove away that day with a new sense of what it means to be a rescuer of lives in the balance. Self-abandonment. Like some quiet heroes who, at this very hour in a broken nuclear plant, are abandoning themselves so others can live. Like the September 11 rescuers at Ground Zero, charging into the rubble of those fallen towers, knowing they might never come out alive. And, above all, like the only Son of God, abandoning all the glory of heaven for the blood and brutality of a cross. For me.

And here am I - and so many of my fellow Jesus-followers - too often wimping out on delivering the only Message that can save people we care about from an unthinkable eternity. My Bible commands me to "rescue those being led away to death" (Proverbs 24:11 ) and to "snatch others from the fire and save them" (Jude 23 ). Those are life-or-death images. Which give all those who belong to the Rescuer a life-saving responsibility.

There's something to be more afraid of than what will happen to us if we tell lost people about Jesus. It's what will happen to them if we don't.