[Faith-talk] FW: [thefamilyoffaith] The Race to Nome

[Eric Calhoun]

Original Message: 
From: "thefamilyoffaith" <TheFamilyofFaith at tampabay.rr.com>
To: <thefamilyoffaith at yahoogroups.com>,
<INTERCESSORS-ALLNATIONS at yahoogroups.com>,
<dfpprayerwarriors at suddenlink.net>, <unitedprayermail at aol.com>,
<CcHhEeSsTtEeRr at yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [thefamilyoffaith] The Race to Nome
Date: 
Sun, 11 Mar 2012 08:11:18 -0400

Ron Hutchcraft Ministries Blog

           
              The Iditarod started earlier this week and again retraces
the route of the original
            race in 1925. Except then it wasn't a sporting event. It was
literally a race for life.    
           
     
     
                  The Race to Nome    


             Maybe it's because of Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. As a
boy watching that show on TV, I was fascinated watching my Mountie hero
racing across the snow with his dog team. I even wore pants that were
marked "husky."
            And then there was my ministry trip to Alaska one February
where I got to see dog team races in the snowy streets of Anchorage at
their "Fur Rondy." Those memories reignited recently when our son retraced
that trip to lay the groundwork for an historic conference for Native
Alaskan young people.
            For whatever reason, I'm intrigued with this continent's
legendary dog team "Super Bowl," the Iditarod. Not just because of the
event itself, but because of its dramatic history. This rigorous race to
Nome started earlier this week and again retraces the route of the original
race in 1925.
            Except then it wasn't a sporting event. It was literally a
race for life.
            In January of 1925, Nome was a remote outpost, faced suddenly
with a deadly outbreak of diphtheria - and virtually no vaccine to stop it.
The National Health Department in Washington concluded that "an epidemic of
diphtheria is almost inevitable." That meant up to 75% of the children in
and around Nome could die.
            A train brought the needed antitoxin as far as the train
could go - to Nenana. That's 640 miles from Nome. From there, it had to be
dog teams, taking the mail route called the Iditarod Trail. But that was
usually a 25-day trip - far too long to save lives in Nome.
            Knowing their mission was life-or-death, the mushers and
their dogs defied the weather and the odds to do what had never been done
before. Like the Pony Express, one team went as far as they could and
handed it off to another musher and his dogs. History records that the
winter of '25 was one of the worst ever, with temperatures that plunged to
60 below. Then the blizzard closed in around them. The lone doctor in Nome
said, "All hope is in the hands of the dogs and their heroic mushers."
            At 5:30 in the morning on January 30, the final musher drove
his dogs - and the serum - into the streets of a sleeping Nome. It took 20
men and 150 dogs to get it there. Amazingly, they made the trip in just 5 ½
days, breaking the world record. More importantly, they saved hundreds of
lives.
            The drama of that desperate race to Nome touches something
deep inside of me. Because it's a picture of a race for life where the
stakes are even higher. A race that began at an old rugged cross 2,000
years ago. Where "Jesus Christ laid down His life for us...that we might
live through Him" (1 John 3:16, 4:9). The News of His death for our sins
and His game-changing resurrection is the only "serum" that can save a
person from a hellish eternity - and give them heaven instead.
            From generation to generation, that life-saving Message has
been entrusted into the hands of every person who's been saved by hearing
it. And today, it's in my hands. And the hands of every person who belongs
to this Jesus.
            Getting Jesus' Message to the people within my reach is not a
casual, "get around to it sometime" thing. It is urgent beyond words. It
is, in the Bible's words, snatching "others from the fire" (Jude 23)...it
is rescuing "those who are being led away to death"...it is holding "back
those who are being led away to slaughter" (Proverbs 24:11). People I know.
People I see all the time. People whose forever depends on what I know
about Jesus. They're one heartbeat away from meeting God. Waiting any
longer to tell them is gambling with their eternity.
             Somewhere along the way, the cause for which Jesus died has
become, like the Iditarod, a spectator sport, lots of activity but no
thought about the lives at stake. But those of us who've been saved by the
serum of the Gospel are responsible before God to get that serum to those
who will die without it. Jesus expects that the driving passion of His
people, His Church, will be the passion that kept Him on the cross - "to
seek and save the lost" (Luke 19:10).
            In a very real sense, we hold their eternities in our hands.
It's a race for life.

                  God's always seeking those who haven't yet come to know
His Son as their Savior from their sin. Maybe today He's chosen to "deliver
the life-saving 'serum'" of Jesus to you by way of what you just read. If
you feel His tug in your heart, He means for this to be the day you trade
life without Jesus for life - and eternity - with Jesus. I hope you'll take
a next step and go to YoursForLife.net - I've laid out there what the Bible
says about how you can get started with Him today. 


            Read More Blogs From Ron Hutchcraft

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