Scenes of joy were beamed across the globe over the past two days as 33 Chilean miners were rescued from their ten week ordeal, entombed within the Earth. All humans, Americans and Russians, Palestinians and Israelis, Indians and Pakistanis, could relate to the emotions on display as the miners were reunited with their families and friends.
Some, of course, saw God's hand in these events and will use the images to further their message of divine intervention. Most of us, however, focused on the humanity of this spectacle, admiring the courage of the miners, the skills of the rescuers and the devotion of their loved ones. For a brief moment in time, we reunited as a human community, oblivious to the national, ethnic and religious barriers that divide us.
It is this common human spirit, after all, that allowed our species to populate the globe, to endure the natural elements that confronted us and to achieve the level of knowledge and technology that permitted this rescue to unfold. Hopefully, these scenes of cooperation and joy will have lasting effects, reigniting a commitment to the welfare of fellow humans across our magnificent planet.
