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Themes: "Christ the Substitute, Wounds of Calvary TW Come with me to an old farm house in the rugged Appalachian foothills of Castlewood, Virginia. I would like to introduce you to each member of the Hartsock family. First, meet Claude and his wife Rachel. Next, in order of age, meet David, Karen, Loretta, Norma Kay and Johnny. As you look over this warm and loving family, you will be attracted to a young lady who's dynamic personality outshines her obvious signs of physical suffering. If you were to ask any of them, they would tell you of all Karen has been through: How that 80 percent of her body had been covered with third degree burns; How she lost all of her fingers; How she has endured eight months of intensive care and hundreds of operations; that she has difficulty walking and her voice will remain hoarse. Then they will tell you how it all happened.
It was during the early morning hours of June 13, 1982. Karen was awaked by her fathers desperate shouts. Fire! Fire! She leaped from her bed and ran to the hallway. Fire and smoke spurted from the walls; the nearby stairway was almost engulf in flames. Horrified, she began yelling for her two younger sisters and brother.
In seconds the upstairs filled with smoke. Norma Kay stumbled from her room crying hysterically. Karen wrapped her arms around her and pulled her down the fiery stairs to safety. While her father, partially invalid from open heart surgery, smothered the flames on Norma Kay's pajamas, Karen fought her way back up the stairs. She knew that Loretta and Johnny, who was crippled by cerebral palsy, would die if she did not reach them.
The walls of the hallway were now fully ablaze. Karen gasped for air, sucking in smoke and fumes. She screamed in pain as her polyester night gown burst into flames. She found Johnny lying helplessly in bed. Frantically wrapped him in a blanket and carried him through the hallway toward the stairs. Suddenly there was a flash around her head as her hair caught on fire. She made her way down the stairs a section after section of burning wallpaper fell upon her. Near the end of the stairs she heaved her brother into the arms of her father.
Karen then turned back toward the stairs in her attempt to find Loretta. At that moment the banister over head collapsed pinning her beneath it. Her weakened father pulled her from underneath the burning debris and out into the yard. Her mother then flung her own body on top of Karen's to smother the flames. Within minutes the entire house gushed up in an immense fireball. David and Loretta had escaped from the house as well.
The family will proudly tell you, had it not been for Karen's selfless love and courage, some of them would have perished in the flames. This brave, 14 year old, young lady became an unlikely saviour to those who could not save themselves.
The Word of God tells us that man consider Jesus "despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grieve." Yet God's view of His Son was different. John tells us "the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world," (1 John 4:14).
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Peter Orasuk
