You’re overseas, serving Christ in a dangerous place. Radicals hear about you. The penalty for naming Christ is grim. They make an example of you.

One day, when you’re not expecting it, you “disappear.” At least to your family, friends, co-laborers, and people back in the States. Your version is less mysterious. You’re snatched, blindfolded, roughed up, and locked away.

Days go by, then weeks, then months. They might torture and kill you, but only if their ransom demands are unmet.

Months pass. People back home are negotiating for your release. And praying.

The buzz increases. Things are happening. Someone is trying to get you out, but there’s trouble. You’re held somewhere remote. No roads, no anything. Inaccessible. The folks back home would need a plane to fetch you. And they can’t arrange one. There are guidelines about such things. Not working with kidnappers. Sovereign airspace. Not provoking local governments. Understandable business practices.

But there’s this kid. He’s from a missionary family . . . and they have a plane. A Cessna 182. A dumpy old plodder. The kid hears about you, volunteers, rigs the plane with external fuel tanks, flies for hours and hours and hours across a desert to an abandoned airstrip, hangs there for three days and nights while nobody shows up . . . and there he is when you do show up. You get a big grin, he puts you on the plane, and you fly home.

Students have huge potential. Courage, intuition, a thirst for God, and a passion for doing good. It’s all in there somewhere.

As you pray for your students, look for the smoldering embers of heroism and fan them into flames. Give them a cause to be heroic about. You might just set a few adults on fire along the way.