When Faith Strips Off Its Coat

On January 13, 1982, Air Florida Flight 90 clipped the 14th Street Bridge in Washington, D.C., and plunged into the ice-choked Potomac River during a blinding snowstorm. Of the seventy-nine people on board, only six initially survived, clinging to the wreckage in twenty-nine-degree water. A U.S. Park Police helicopter arrived and began lowering a lifeline, but passenger Priscilla Tirado was too weak and hypothermic to hold on. She slipped beneath the surface.

Lenny Skutnik, a twenty-eight-year-old office worker at the Congressional Budget Office, stood watching from the Virginia shoreline with dozens of other bystanders. Everyone saw the same thing. Everyone felt the same horror. But Skutnik did what no one else did — he shed his coat and boots and plunged into the freezing Potomac. He swam through ice and jet fuel to reach Tirado and pulled her to safety.

Weeks later, President Reagan honored Skutnik at the State of the Union address, beginning a tradition that continues to this day. But what set Skutnik apart was not the recognition. It was the moment he stopped being a spectator.

James 2:17 tells us plainly: "Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." Every person on that riverbank had compassion in their hearts. Only one put it in his hands and feet. The Christian life is not measured by what moves us but by what moves us to move. Compassion that stays on the shore is sympathy. Compassion that hits the water is faith.