“God is good.”

Three little words spoken by a man who was severely wounded, hidden in a crevice. A man with a bounty on his head. A man with enemies on all sides. A man who needed to be rescued. A man with deep faith in his country but even deeper faith in his God.

“God is good.”

On Friday, April 3, 2026, an F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet was shot down over Iran. Both the pilot and the weapons system officer ejected from the plane and landed in enemy territory. The pilot was rescued within hours, but it would take over forty-eight hours and 150 U.S. aircraft to complete the rescue mission of the second man. The concussed and bleeding officer used his survival and evasion training to treat his own wounds, scale cliff faces, and climb 7,000 feet up a ridge to hide in a crevice for over forty-eight hours while the enemy closed in around him. And the first words he spoke to the base when he made radio contact were these: “God is good.”

Not, “Help!” Not, “Get me out of here!” Not, “Where are you guys?” Not, “Why me?”

Nope. “God is good.”

The United States is a powerful nation with powerful and well-trained armed forces. The United States also has a mantra of “no man left behind.” The hidden officer knew this, and he trusted in his comrades and his country to pull off a spectacular “Sandy” mission on his behalf. This term was not familiar to me, so I looked into what it meant. General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it this way: “A Sandy has one mission: Get to the survivor, bring the rescue force forward, and put themselves between that survivor on the ground and the enemy.”

The U.S. Special Forces had already done that successfully with the ejected pilot. And the weapons systems officer knew they’d come to rescue him next.

But he also knew something else. The downed officer trusted in his country, but he had a deeper trust—that even if the mission was a failure and he was killed, he had already been rescued from much bigger enemies. He knew that God is good. In the ultimate Sandy mission, Jesus had already come down, put himself between us and our enemy, and defeated the powers of sin, death, and the devil. We had a bounty on our heads. We were bleeding out. We couldn’t treat our own wounds. We didn’t have the power to scale a cliff face. We were dead in our transgressions and sins. And then … we were rescued. God is good.

The officer was shot down on Good Friday. He hid in the crevice all day Saturday. He was rescued and flew out of Iran as the sun rose on Easter Sunday morning. God is good.

The disciples watched their Jesus die at the hands of their enemies on Good Friday. The followers of Jesus spent Saturday scared and in hiding, not knowing what would happen next, enemies on all sides. But on Easter Sunday morning … hope. An empty tomb. Rescue. God is good.

Because of Easter, because God did exactly as he said he would, we can know that we have a Rescuer. And we know that no matter what happens on this earth, no matter what we are going through, no matter what enemies are surrounding us, God is good and he has rescued us.

The apostle Paul knew this, maybe better than anyone. You see, he had been an enemy of Jesus. He had persecuted the church of Christ. And then he was saved in a dramatic search and rescue conversion mission (see Acts 9, where God changed more than Paul’s name). Paul was then persecuted in every way, stoned and beaten and “exposed to death again and again” (2 Corinthians 11:23). And still he praised Jesus from prisons, and still he wrote these words:

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:1–8)

Jesus pulled off the ultimate Sandy mission. He put himself between us and our enemy. God is good.