Rescue

Rescue. Many years ago, I trained and worked as a lifeguard at our neighborhood’s swimming pool. Each day between Memorial Day and Labor Day, the pool opened to a couple hundred people, mostly kids. Swimming lessons were available before general swimming times, but sometimes kids attempted to swim without ever bothering to learn how to swim. For a lifeguard, this is a problem. Every other time I sat up in the elevated guard-chair, roasting in the sun, it was easy work, mostly consisting of counting heads, enduring the endless games of “Marco Polo” below me, and twirling my whistle’s lanyard back-and-forth around my finger. But one time, the only time I had to make a rescue of a distressed swimmer, a child who had never been to a pool decided that the waterslide was the place to start the experience of swimming. His was an immersion in water, and the Lord’s name was invoked, but this was no baptism. I blew my whistle, dove in, almost lost my swim trunks due to the height of the dive, but crossed the water at record speed (for me). However, before I could save the day, or the boy, my manager—who was standing nearer than I was sitting—plucked the boy out of the deep end without even getting wet. She later chided me for diving in when it would have been faster for me to walk/run around the pool than to swim through it, as if that were common knowledge.

Clearly, I didn’t get the employee award that day, but I learned some things about rescue. (1) A rescuer must be outside the distress to help those in distress. (2) A rescuer must be capable, available, willing, and qualified. (3) A rescuer draws upon previous training or experience before the distress begins. (4) A rescuer should tie his swim trunks tightly before he climbs into the guard-chair. And, although I never experienced it personally, (5) a rescuer should not attempt to rescue someone who doesn’t want to be rescued, or who is in a panic. In those cases, both the one in distress and the rescuer could—and often do—go under together. It is better to wait until the distressed swimmer is too exhausted to resist.

The Apostle Paul, at the end of his life, was clearly meditating upon rescue. He repeated the word twice in the last paragraph he would ever write. ”At my first defense no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. May it not be charged against them! But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed, and all the Gentiles might hear it. So, I was rescued from the lion's mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen” (2 Tim. 4:16-18). Effectively and poetically, Paul likely lumped together all the occasions that the Lord rescued him as “from the lion’s mouth.” Although knowing Paul, he might literally have been thrown to the lions in the gladiator arena, too. But Paul’s insight on rescue includes two more lessons that went far beyond my Basic Lifesaving & Lifeguarding course ever could. (+1) Even if the Lord decides not, he is always able to rescue. (+2) While it is a scriptural guarantee that the Lord will rescue his people “from every evil deed,” that does not mean such will happen on earth. Sometimes, his rescue is death because through death Jesus brings us “safely into his heavenly kingdom.”