Once a week I will be sharing a story from my life. Please let me know what you think of this week’s story. I have shared these stories in sermons over the years. It is my hope to compile them into a book a year from now.

The best caves for exploring are undeveloped. These are the ones you discover while out hiking, or you read them in a regional book on the outdoors, and you have to go find the hole in the ground yourself. It might be an old mine or a lava river tube that goes so deep you never find the end of it. In these places, you can’t help but dream of hidden treasure while fearing getting lost or having the cave collapse.

I had heard about a limestone cavern in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas that had a creek flowing through it. With an inner tube or an air mattress, you could enter on one end of the cave and drift or paddle out the other. It was only known by the locals. My Uncle Bobby was a local and he gave Heidi and me clear instructions on how to get there. We were traveling with our two friends, Curt and Rachel, who had a hankering for adventure just as much as we did.

Stepping out of our air-conditioned car, we were slapped with the intensity of the 102 degrees Fahrenheit summer air. We applied sunscreen, grabbed water bottles, and began descending the dusty trail that led us into a canyon. We didn’t have any floats and instead planned to wade and swim into it as far as possible.

I tried to stay far from the poison oak that lined the trail’s meandering switchbacks. I possess an amazing ability to acquire poison oak, without even touching it. After hiking about a mile, we arrived at the bottom where the air was cooler and the canyon walls gave us some shade from the hard sun that had been tanning our shoulders only moments ago.

The trail continued upstream where it soon disappeared into a natural tunnel that burrowed into a significant cliff that blocked the width of the canyon. As we approached the tunnel, the trail disappeared into the stream bed which was filled with cold mountain water.

We shed our shoes, hats, and sunglasses and began exploring the water at the mouth of the cave, testing its temperature (brrr!), depth, and the force of the current that we would be swimming against. I led the way, swimming into the mouth of the cavern, stopping occasionally to test the depth, discovering that it fluctuated between wadable and untouchable.

My wife and our friends were just testing the waters as the darkness of the cavern drew me deeper in. As my eyes adjusted from the glaring sunlight to my unlit surroundings, I began to see that the ceiling was higher than I had imagined. With each dog-paddle stroke that I took, the water grew colder and the cave appeared deeper than I had expected. I wanted to see how far I had to swim into the dark before the light would appear from the other side of the cave, where the water entered this cavern.

Limestone formations ornately decorated the ceiling and the sheer walls. The sound of my swimming echoed through the chamber. The chilling water enveloped me with its eerie blackness that matched the care.

Then I saw a white face just above the surface of the water. I was startled. It scared me. Goosebumps rippled across my skin. There in the darkest part of the cave, in the water appeared a human. It was the strangest place to discover someone, alone. They hadn’t said anything until now and I was just ten feet away. Their eyes were wide open with fear.

“Hello?” I questioned, initiating a conversation in spite of the fear that gripped me. What was this Golem-esq person doing here?

Making eye contact I saw terror looking back at me. It was a woman, clutching to a partially inflated yellow innertube. Her breathing was shallow and fast.

“Are you OK?” I asked.

She shook her head back and forth.

“I’ll help you.” I offered as I dog paddled towards her. “You’ll be OK.”

It was obvious that there was something wrong and I concluded that the best thing for this lady would be to get her out of the cave.

I diagnosed that she was paralyzed with fear, having had some sort of a panic attack in the worst possible place. I had no idea how long she had been there.

She grabbed hold of my arm and I began paddling back towards the distant light from which I had come. With her face now close to mine, the strong smell of alcohol hit me and I realized that there were other factors that were contributing to this woman’s pitiable condition.

“You’re going be fine. It isn’t far from here to the light.” I assured her as I gently pulled her along. She remained silent, except for her frantic breathing.

I am not a strong swimmer, and dragging a person made the process much slower and difficult. Fortunately, we had the current working to our advantage. The light of the entrance grew brighter and bigger with each kick of my legs. It took a long time to swim her out of the cave. At least it felt like a long time. I had forgotten about my wife and friends who had not followed me deep into the cave. Paddling out of the cave I was greeted with inquisitive looks from them as I dragged this lady along.

The blazing sun blinded my eyes as they re-adjusted. Finding the bottom of the stream with my feet I stood, panting, just outside the cave close to the nearest shore.

“You can stand now. You’re going to be fine” I assured the lady.
She smiled faintly, stood gingerly, and waded on wobbly legs to the opposite shore.

There I noticed a man I had not seen before. He wore cutoff jeans, had long hair, and a nazi swastika tattooed across his chest. The woman staggered towards the man knowingly. “I guess she is going to be OK,” I thought, unconvinced, as I rejoined my wife and friends.

I tossed a casual glance in the direction of the man and women and to my dismay, they had some surgical tubing and a syringe in hand as they appeared to be preparing to shoot up with heroin. It was a disturbing contrast to the beautiful surroundings as we tried to enjoy one of God’s creative wonders. Beauty and brokenness. Light and darkness. Hot and cold. Help and harm. Hope and hopelessness. Life and death. We live in a world of stark and tragic contrasts.

You don’t have to look far to find frightened people stuck in the dark. They live on the street corner by the bus stop. They hide drowning in alcohol in a beautiful house. They pilfer your car for change. They come to church vainly trying to earn God’s approval. They’re across the hall. They’re in line with you at the espresso stand.

God goes into caves. He is a rescuer. There are no places that He cannot access. He found us, and He invites us to be rescuers as well.

Colossians 1:13-14
13For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

If you are open and available, God will use you to find frightened people alone in the dark. It is our privilege to reach out to them, and pull them into the light if we can.

It might not transform their life in the way that we hope, but it will transform that moment of their life.

• Identify and pray for someone you know who is trapped in darkness right now.
• How can you pull them towards the light for at least a moment?