The release of the hostages. This has been such a part of our lives for the last two years that there is no need to identify which ones or from where for our hearts spring with joy at the mere mention of the words.

Last week I read an amazing story about a discovery in Toronto. Over a century ago in the late 1880s the city of Toronto was being urbanized. To do so more than 25 feet of dirt and gravel had ended up on top of vast areas of peat bogs and wetlands. In the 1920s the Don River located there was “re-engineered” by construction of a concrete channel which decades later resulted in costly flooding of the surrounding area. Solutions for the overdevelopment were sought.

So in 2007 a project began to restore the area to its original state to the extent possible. When man’s better choices, not only to stop bulldozing, but also, to correct prior bad choices took precedence, God revealed truths that only God can create.

In an effort to reroute the river, three years ago a bulldozer driver stopped when he saw unusually thick green shoots growing under 25 feet of dry hard packed dusty earth. The sedges and cattails he noticed looked nothing like the other weeds that were in the area. Miraculously, scientists found that the seeds and pollen there as well as plants were not ones in existence today, but rather, had been trapped underground for more than a century. They somehow had “roared back to life” when exposed to the light.

Dayenu, as if that weren’t enough, scientists have just recently discovered rebirth was not just with the plant life. When the researchers placed samples under the microscope, brown wormlike animals could be seen eating 130-year-old algae as if more than a century had not passed since their last meal! Similarly, water fleas, worms, and plankton were also spinning and dancing around the greenery. A quote from one of the scientists:

“When the project started, it was like being on the moon. The space was so just barren, so awful, dusty. It was bereft of any life.” (Melanie Sifton) The lab was astounded by plant life found from seemingly nothing that could sustain it, let alone that these animals could lie dormant for over a century and then come to life!

Pollen from the American chestnut tree now extinct in that area dating from the 1500s was found and is viable. Octogenarian worms, larvae and plankton are alive again.

Somehow reading this article on the cusp of the release of the hostages provided such a powerful metaphor. How the hostages must have felt – in deathlike isolation, darkness, withstanding mistreatment, given unsustainable provision, seemingly without hope for survival, and yet . . .

They came home, those that did live, symbolically and in reality evidence not just of the will to survive, but most likely they may now be feeling as if they were reborn, that they were given a new chance to live,  perhaps now even more aware of the gift of life springing from what may have seemed certain death.

They are heroes, larger than life examples of human beings, God’s amazing creations, to be admired, for us to emulate as models of righteous sufferers. We are never to forget their ordeal as we think about life, nor to forget the amazing love that sustained them, the love God infused into a horrific situation created by evil men’s choices. Nevertheless, God is faithful and sustained the hostages as well as their co-sufferers, especially their families and friends, who painfully have been waiting for the hostages to come home. God answered the prayers of those praying for their return.

We have just begun a New Year, a time when we are once again given an opportunity to start fresh, clean, with hope and gratitude, with a renewed longing for the light, with courage, strength and perseverance, reminded what a gift it is to be alive, with the knowledge we can overcome hardship, sometimes seemingly beyond endurance.

We are all as dust, sometimes as if buried under mounds of dry dirt, lifeless, without hope.  Yet our Creator gives us opportunities for new life, not just in every breath each day, but also, even more powerfully when that “given” is taken away, whether for a century, years, or days. We are reminded that the gift of life is not to be taken for granted. We are reminded to do the most we can, in our limited human, yet meaningful, ways to make our lives and the lives around us well lived while we are here in this realm and able to serve. For as we serve others, we serve Him.

Thank God for the safe return of the hostages and hopefully the continued return of those less fortunate who did not survive. May it be a reminder of the miracle of life from death, of the never-ending light of Yeshua that awaits our search. In the courage of the hostages may we be even more motivated to live deeply for His Glory.

Shabbat shalom.

Diane