The Gospel According to Find My iPhone

In today's news is a story of a woman who was stuck in a ravine at the foothills in San Jose, California, for 19 hours while rescuers tried to locate her.  She was driving a GM car fully equipped with OnStar and when she careened over the 500-foot ravine, it triggered a call to authorities.  The problem?  OnStar was way off.  When the police went to search for the car, they had no luck locating it at the indicated location.  Two hours later, the OnStar system sent a new alert indicating the car was in downtown San Jose.

Once the search came up null, a very smart detective asked her Mom if she had an iPad.  She did and he was able to crack the iPad code to get in.  Word on the street (or at least the Today Show) is authorities are equipped with ways to crack into mobile devices for emergency purposes.  Once he got into her iPad, he used the Find My iPhone app and was able to find her exact location.  Amazing.  Hate on Apple all you want folks, but this one saved a life.

I recently added an app to my phone, Life360, that puts me in the Blackwell family circle.  My friend, Beth, lives about 10 minutes from her house and if I become unresponsive to calls or texts, she can locate me.  Since I live alone, it's a good safety feature.  But, at times, it is inaccurate.  Not OnStar inaccurate, but not perfect.

When I heard this story this morning, I thought about how this woman depended on that great OnStar add-on to her vehicle for safety purposes, but if that was all she had, it would let her down.  Thankfully, the officers knew other mechanisms that were more precise that would help them find her and her car before it was too late.  Good thing, or this story would not have had a happy ending.

So many times when we are in the ravines of life, we are depending on a faulty backup plan to get us out.  We figure we can handle things in our own strength and have all the resources we need to get out of the pit.  But, that's not the case.  We need the One who always knows exactly where we are...whether we are on the mountaintop or upside down in a ravine.  Though Apple isn't infallible, our God is and we are the apple of His eye.  He can spot us wherever we may find ourselves, wherever we may run to hide.  He will always be our Rescuer.