The Guardian

“What’s your real number?”
“22”
“22? That’s not bad.  It’s not 200 but…”
“22 is the number of people I lost, Jake. The only number I kept track of. The only number that matters.”

The movie The Guardian – if you haven’t seen it – is about the Coast Guard rescue swimmers.  Well at least on the surface.  It actually is a story about being lost and being found and grace and redemption and what we pass on to others.  What legacy we leave when we leave this life forever.  As Ben Randall packs his locker one last time, Jake Fischer probes to find out the answer to every cadet’s question:  “How many people did Ben save?  What’s his number?”.  The answer Jake gets is completely unexpected.  Like so many of us, Jake is keeping track of those things that can be counted as glory – earthly glory.  How many lives saved?  How much money made?  How much bigger the house?

Ecclesiastes 5:15 tells us: “Everyone comes naked from their mother’s womb, and as everyone comes, so they depart. They take nothing from their toil that they can carry in their hands.”

Clearly, we are told that the wealth we amass here cannot go with us.  When we depart, the money, the houses, the cars, the finery of whatever kind, stays here.  How many times have you heard the jokes about hearses not having trailer hitches?  That you can’t take it with you?  Nothing here lasts.

But careful reading shows that what we cannot take with us is bounded by what we can carry in our hands.  So what lasts?

“The Coast Guard conducted the largest search and rescue mission for a single man in its history, but the body of Senior Chief Ben Randall was never found. What makes a legend? Is it what someone did while they were alive? Or how they’re remembered after they’re gone? Some people actually believe Senior Chief made the swim to the Aleutian Islands, that he’s standing on a distant beach somewhere with a fishing pole in his hand. But I found my answer a couple of weeks later.
[Jake pulls a victim into the helicopter]
Drowning Victim: Where is he?
Jake Fischer: Huh? There’s nobody else out there, man.
Drowning Victim: No, he was there! He was with me the whole time! He said he would hold on till help arrived. He never let go!
Jake Fischer: There is a legend of a man who lives beneath the sea. He is a fisher of men, a last hope for all those who’ve been left behind. He is known as the Guardian.“

What can we “take” with us?  What lasts?  I’m sure we all have heirlooms of one sort or another, but why do we keep them?  Because of their monetary value?  Why do people go back into burning buildings to get their family photo albums?  We keep heirlooms and rescue family photo albums because of what they represent – not because of the price we could receive if we sold them.  Because they represent those who invested in us, who loved us, who we loved and admired and wanted to be like, who we cared about and for, who we keep close in our hearts.  Because of our relationship with them. Because that’s what we take with us out of every burning building, out of every situation, out of this world.

The relationships that haunt us are often part of our own number – our own “22” – the ones we lost.  The failures.  The situations where we should have said but didn’t.  Where we should have acted but didn’t or even worse, should not have acted but did.

BUT There is a legend of a man who lives beneath the sea. He is a fisher of men, a last hope for all those who’ve been left behind. He is known as the Guardian. He is known as Jesus the Christ.  And this is the season of His residence with mankind.  Not just Christmas.  Not just Easter.  Not just in the days of Rome and Galilee.  But here and now.  He is fishing for men.  He is the last hope.  The only Hope.  And He has no number.