It is a typical Saturday for me since I took on this task of producing Jesus… No Greater Love.  Being on the west coast, I wake hours behind the rest of America, and that means waking to a flood of emails and phone messages awaiting answers. 

Even though it’s Saturday, that means little.  There are so many puzzle pieces that need to come together, so many deicisions needing to be made, so many details that need to be co-ordinated… and ”the buck” begins/stops with li’l ol’ me.  Yikes!

That’s all to give you an idea of my (typical) morning today.  I mean, here it is 2:29 PM and I have yet to get out of my pj’s and into the shower – I just haven’t had a chance yet!  I promise you, if you ever want to end “life as you know it,” just produce a Jesus movie!  Glory to Jesus!

None of that is a complaint, by the way.  As stretching and exhausting as the journey is, I lay in bed at the end of every night, smiling at the ceiling in the knowledge of where this is all going.  It’s as if I can see the words come up on the screen that most glorious premier day, Jesus… No Greater Love.  Even more, I can “see” the lives that will be changed – as the Lord would have it, innumerable lives.  And again I say, glory to Jesus!

Today was tougher than usual – and at the same time, more “urgent” than usual.  We’ve all been deeply impacted by the events in Haiti.  If you’re anything like me, you sit in front of your TV restraining tears.  Personally, I can’t bear to watch the images, they shake me so deeply that I struggle to gather my emotions so I can carry on with what I need to do.  

I don’t know about anyone else, but I find it extremely difficult to conduct ”normal life” knowing the depth of suffering and horror – knowing there are children lying still buried, still breathting, literally entombed, straining to hear even the slightest whisper of someone out there coming to help…  Dear Jesus, your mercy! 

Just now, CNN reporter, Anderson Cooper, is covering a rescue effort.  Los Angeles Search/Rescue Teams were alerted that there might be someone alive in a collpased day care center – a child, perhaps.  They were about to give up but then suddenly they heard a distinctive “three taps.”  Just thinking about it now as I write, the tears swell in my eyes – oh Father, save this precious child!  Save now!

But Cooper (whose politics I know nothing about, but I respect as a journalist who does his job with passion and integrity) just spoke the phrase, “…the faint tappings of life.”  I don’t know how it strikes you, but it strikes me so deeply.  The faint tappings of life…

I could springboard in a lot of different directions off that phrase.  I could talk about how there’s only one thing more tragic than people dying in this way – and that’s people dying in this way without Jesus.  I could say, “That’s why we’re making this film and  that’s why we need you to support it.”  But you know all that already…

I could make an appeal for you to donate to the relief effort in Haiti.  But I’m assuming we’ve all done that already.  I could say we need to pray till our knees bleed – but that being so obvious, I assume we’re all praying already.  

After all, we’re Christians.  And on top of living in the security of God’s salvation, that’s supposed to mean compassion, care, mercy, understanding…  It’s supposed to mean sensitivity to the suffering of others and setting our own selves aside in response.  So -

May God truly fill us all with HIS heart in these days; may we who are his children truly see this all with HIS eyes – the only eyes to see any situation through – and give us the courage to “be” him to a world that desperately needs to “see and experience” him through us, glory to Jesus!

What I want to say is simply this… Jesus is all about life.  There is absolutely zero about him, or of his hand or doing, that is anything other than giving of life, saving of life, redeeming of life, healing of life… 

“Life” is his heart.  It is his most perfect will for each and every one of us to live in fullness of life on every level of our lives.  It is the summation of his hope, desire, aim, purpose, plan… for you in your individual life – and through you, in every life you have the God-given opportunity to come across. 

To bring life, to nurture life, to turn death into life, to fulfill unto life – and even more, abundant life.  This is the heart of Jesus.  This is his “who he is.”  Life, life, life… Jesus.

So the question that confronts us all today (and every day) is this… ”Do we hear the faint tappings of life?” If we stop and listen we’ll discover they’re all around us – lives buried under heaps of “rubble.”  Lives entombed in pain and aloneness.  Lives broken and straining ever-so-hard for some sign that someone out there cares enough to notice – to notice their faint tappings…

If we stop to listen – and stop to care – something tells me that the “faint tappings” will become a literal din in our ears, a roar so loud and undeniable, just as it was in the ears of Jesus 2000 years ago, just as it continues to be in his divine ears today. 

For, my Christian friend, the “tappers” are in the billions.  Tap, tap, tap.  And they’re begging we who are the holders, the carriers, the bearers and participants in True Life  to not pass them by.  But rather to stop, take the time, listen, care… and bring them the only true hope they have, Life.

It’s now 3:49 my time, and Anderson Cooper is still on the scene.  A search dog named Maverick just went in and couldn’t pick up a scent.  The rescue team stopped to discuss what to do. 

But even as they were weighing options they heard it again, a distinctive, intentional three taps.  ”Tap, tap, tap…”  The faint tappings of life.