Throw Out the Life Line

“… For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” (Luke 19:10)

On a cold day several years ago in New York City a detective, one of several hundred trained in suicide rescue found himself talking to a psychiatric patient who had squeezed through a sixth-floor bathroom window at Bellevue Hospital Center.  The man’s toes barely fit on a building lip below, so he mostly clung to the window ledge by his fingers.  He told the detective he had killed somebody a few years back and could no longer live with the guilt.

“Ok, we all make mistakes,” the detective told him.  “That doesn’t mean you should take your life.  We’re all human beings.  None of us are perfect.”

“Why don’t you just push me?  What don’t you just end it for me?” the man goaded the detective, who recounted his words.  “That’s not my purpose for being here,” the detective told him.

The conversation continued for some three hours as the detective leaned out a seventh-floor window, talking, buying time, as other officers cut away window glass to create an opening large enough to make a life-saving grab.  The detective sensed the man was ready to come in.  He was shirtless and cold; his muscles quivered. He asked for a blanket.

Fatigue set in and he was extending his arms to the detective, but the detective couldn’t reach him.  At that point, the detective recalled, the man on the ledge panicked a little bit, and that’s when he kind of groaned and said, “OK”, and he left … fell. The twelve-year veteran detective spoke in a low voice, pausing pensively between words.

“That was my first failure,” he said.  “That was the one and only time that I lost someone I was talking to.” Every day these men and women put their uniforms on, kiss their loved ones and leave for the office.  An office most of us can’t even imagine or would ever want to experience.

There have been several times in my life when I found myself engaged with someone in a life-threatening situation, who believed themselves to be in a hopeless situation and talked, prayed and encouraged them not to give in or to give up or to take their own life.  Like the detective who goes home at night with the comfort that he has given his best, we must strive to give our best in trying to reach and save the erring and the lost!

There are souls all around us, some we know at work, others living in our neighborhood or apartment complex.  There can be and often are souls within our own family tree.  This knowledge can be overwhelming or at least it should be.  What can we do?  What can I do?  Do I decide they must deserve to be where they are and just walk away?

It is amazing how the words of an old song or hymn that was sung when we were young can come back to the forefront of our minds.  Please take a few moments to consider the following words from the hymn written by Edward S. Ufford way back in the late 1800’s entitled Throw Out The Life Line.

Throw out the lifeline across the dark wave; There is a brother whom someone should save; Somebody’s brother!  Oh, who then will dare To throw out the lifeline, his peril to share?

Throw out the lifeline with hand quick and strong:  Why do you tarry, why linger so long?  See!  He is sinking; oh, hasten today And out with the life boat!  Away, then, away!

Throw out the lifeline to danger-fraught men, Sinking in anguish where you’ve never been; Winds of temptation and billows of woe Will soon hurl them out where the dark waters flow.

Soon will the season of rescue be o’er, Soon will they drift to eternity’s shore; Hasten, then, my brother, no time for delay, But throw out the lifeline and save them today.

Throw out the lifeline!  Throw out the lifeline!  Someone is drifting away; Throw out the lifeline!  Throw out the lifeline!  Someone is sinking today.

This is the lifeline, oh, tempest-tossed men, Baffled by waves of temptation and sin; Wild winds of passion, your strength cannot brave, But Jesus is might, and Jesus can save.

Jesus is able!  To you who are driv’n Farther and farther from God and from Heav’n, Helpless and hopeless, o’erwhelmed by the wave, We throw out the lifeline — ‘tis, “Jesus can save.”  This is the lifeline, oh, grasp it today!  See, you are recklessly drifting away; Voices in warning, shout over the wave, Oh, grasp the strong lifeline, for Jesus can save.

Will you look around in your own world today and see if there is not someone who is out on that ledge, who needs you to “Throw Out The Lifeline?”  There is no greater work!

“Look on my right hand and see, For there is no one who acknowledges me; Refuge has failed me; No one cares for my soul.”  (Psalm 142: 4)

Bill Fairchild, Jr.

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