9-16-21 (2 minutes 11 seconds)

Back when we lived in central Iowa, the phone rang very early on a Sunday morning.
Our distressed hog farmer friend needed us to come immediately to help. There was a severe crisis brewing in his barn. We hastily threw old clothes on, ran to our car, and sped to the farm.
Roaring up the country driveway, we saw another friend arriving just ahead of us. Rolf, built like the All-American offensive lineman he was, was a sight hurrying toward the pig barn wearing swimming trunks and goggles. Leaping from our car we rushed into the barn as a horrific stench filled our nostrils, and our eyes began to sting from the acidic waste below us. Swim goggles would have been a good idea.

The hog pen flooring consisted of slatted grates suspended several feet above a virtual sewer of waste. That is a handy way to manage pig poop unless, like this morning, a naughty pig roots around with its snout and hoists one of the grates out of place. The naughty grate-lifting pig was probably the first to fall through the new hole in the flooring and drop to its fate in the sewage below.
One by one, about half of our friend’s hogs had fallen through the hole that morning. At that moment the farmer’s livelihood was swimming for their lives below us, on the edge of drowning in their waste.

The plan was for my husband to lie prone right next to that hole in the floor as I stood beside him shining a spotlight back and forth down into the darkness. We were searching for the snout or an ear of a pig still bobbing and swimming below us. When a nose or ear was briefly illuminated by my light, Jon with his long discus throwing arm, would reach way down holding a vice grip, and clamp the tool onto the pigs ear. Then he would heave with all of his might as our farmer friend assisted him by pulling on his arms and together they would raise a poop-covered, screaming pig from the grossness below.
Oh, my word! How those pigs in the process of being saved squealed! Our muscle-y football friend would bear-hug the newly rescued pig and carry it, screaming, to an area set aside to hose it off and assess its viability. At the same time, we proceeded to scan the darkness below looking for the next pig.
This was our mission.
A few pigs were saved that morning but sadly, many of the farmer’s hogs drowned that day.

Coated in hog mess, my hubs and I headed to the nearest lake to swim and clean ourselves off.
As we sat reflecting on the beach bank about our morning, we talked about the stupidity of the pigs to fall through that hole in the first place, the dark pit of death that the pigs were swimming and dying in, and the heroic rescue mission to save just a few.

Then we began to talk about Psalm 103 and our rescue from a pit. How unsettlingly similar some aspects of our own rescue are to that of those pigs.

“Bless the Lord all my soul and forget not all His benefits…Who redeems your life from the pit”, says Psalm 103.

We have been:
Rescued from a pit darker and more putrid than we realize.
Redeemed and washed by the blood of Jesus.
Raised to walk in newness of life, now and forever.

Our redemption has a present stunning aspect: the release from the penalty and power of sin (Ephesians 1:7). There is also a glorious future aspect of our redemption: a time when we as believers will be released from the presence of sin and our bodies will be transformed. (1 Peter 1:5, Romans 8:23)

Life redeemed from a pit.