SAVING
CECILIA

Topics: Atonement; Children; Cross; Devotion; Jesus Christ; Love; Mothers; Protection; Sacrifice; Salvation

References: John 3:16; 12:20–33; Romans 8:38–39; Philippians 2:5–11

Northwest Airlines flight 225 crashed just after takeoff from Detroit on August 16, 1987, killing 155 people. Only one person survived: Cecilia, four, of Tempe, Arizona.

When rescuers found Cecilia, they did not believe she had been on the plane. They thought she had been a passenger in one of the cars on the highway onto which the airliner crashed. But when the passenger list was checked, there was Cecilia’s name.

Cecilia survived because, as the plane was falling, Cecilia’s mother, Paula Chican, unbuckled her own seat belt, got down on her knees in front of her daughter, wrapped her arms and body around Cecilia, and would not let her go. Nothing could separate that child from her mother’s love—neither tragedy nor fall nor the flames that followed.

Such is the love of our Savior for us. He left heaven, lowered himself to us, and covered us with the sacrifice of his own body to save us.

—Bryan Chapell, In the Grip of Grace (Baker, 1992)