The Shepherd Who Practiced the Rescue

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Rick Rescorla stood on the forty-fourth floor of the World Trade Center's South Tower and did what he had rehearsed a thousand times. The former British-born soldier — a decorated Vietnam veteran who had fought at the Battle of Ia Drang in 1965 — was now head of security for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, the building's largest tenant. After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Rescorla had studied the towers' vulnerabilities and predicted that terrorists would strike again, this time from the air. His colleagues thought him paranoid. He drilled employees anyway, timing evacuations, mapping stairwell routes, insisting that every person on those twenty-two floors know exactly where to go.

When the South Tower shuddered at 9:03 a.m., Rescorla grabbed his bullhorn and began singing to calm the terrified workers filing down the stairs. He sang Cornish folk songs and Men of Harleth, the same hymn he had sung to steady young soldiers in Vietnam. Within seventy-seven minutes, 2,687 Morgan Stanley employees reached the street alive. Then Rescorla turned and climbed back up. He was last seen on the tenth floor, heading toward stragglers. He never came out.

Jesus told His followers, "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep" (John 10:11). What made Rescorla's sacrifice so effective was not just his courage in the moment — it was his years of preparation. He had already walked those stairwells in his mind and in his boots, long before the fire fell. The Good Shepherd did the same. Before Calvary, there was Gethsemane. Before the cross, there was a lifetime of obedience. Christ did not stumble into sacrifice — He prepared for it, walked toward it, and finished it so that His people could live.