I have just finished reading The 33 by Héctor Tobar. It is about the 33 men who were trapped in the San José mine in Chile and how they were rescued.
One of the miners was Franklin Lobos who was formerly a soccer star with the nickname of “The Magic Mortar” for his ability to kick missile-like free kicks into his opponent’s goal. As he got older, his soccer career faded and he had to take other jobs including being a miner at age 52.
The miners even while they were still trapped underground were famous the world over. Franklin’s soccer career showed him how fleeting fame can be and he wanted his fellow miners to recognize that the “heady sense of being at the center of everything, will disappear quicker than they could possibly imagine”. [1] He tried to communicate this to them but he recognized that “the only way to learn it is to live it”. So all he could do was to watch “as his fellow trapped miners’ obsession with their public image drives them to pettiness”. [2]
It is the same with all of us. How many of us learn from the mistakes of others? How many of us learn by reading or hearing what someone else tells us? Most of the time, we must live it to learn it.
That is why Christianity is more than a belief system. Christianity is putting a belief system into practice. It is only when we actually live what we say we believe that our beliefs come to life. “. . .faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. (James 2:17 NIV).
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[1] Héctor Tobar, The 33, Kindle edition, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook, Kindle location 4089.
[2[ Tobar, Kindle location 4100.
