When the Ground Opened and Light Poured In

On October 13, 2010, shift foreman Luis Urzúa sat 2,300 feet below the Atacama Desert in Chile, where he and thirty-two other miners had been trapped for sixty-nine days. A catastrophic rock collapse had sealed them in a space the size of a small apartment. Above ground, their families held vigil. Churches across Santiago gathered for round-the-clock prayer. Engineers drilled through solid diorite with no guarantee of success.

When rescue capsule Phoenix finally descended through a shaft barely wider than a man's shoulders, the miners stared at it in stunned silence. Mario Sepulveda, the second man lifted out, later said the ascent felt like a dream — the slow rise through darkness, the growing roar of a crowd he couldn't yet see, then blinding Chilean sunlight on his face for the first time in over two months. He dropped to his knees on the surface and wept.

That disorientation is exactly what Peter experienced. Chains falling away. Iron gates swinging open on their own. Guards standing motionless. He walked through it all convinced he was seeing a vision — until cold night air hit his face on a Jerusalem street and he whispered, "Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent His angel."

Sometimes God's deliverance is so complete, so impossibly thorough, that the rescued person is the last one to believe it's real. The church had been praying. The Almighty had been moving. And Peter — like a miner blinking in sudden daylight — had to catch up to the miracle already underway.