Few of us can claim to have been untouched by the Chilean mining incident last year - I was certainly transfixed by all the live coverage, especially when each of them emerged from the capsule that rescued them from their underground prison.

You may ask why I've been reminded of it today. I read an article on the train to London this morning that not only brought memories flooding back but also opened up new insights and strangely dovetailed into something else I'm working on. In my experience, coincidences like that have to be chewed on for a while longer.

The article was by the man who had the most active Christian faith in the group of 33 that were trapped so it was written from that bias but the fascinating bit for me was that - once having assessed the situation and accounted for the whole team - they decided that their best option was to pray. They asked the author to pray alone but he said we do it all together or not at all. From that moment on they gathered in a circle and prayed twice each day.

However, the piece that really hit me was when he spoke about the first little shaft that the would-be rescuers drilled that missed their sanctuary. They could hear the drilling but knew it hadn't found them. That was 10 days into their incarceration - how awful can that have been... apparently after that some of those trapped started to write farewell letters to loved ones. However, the second shaft eventually made it through to their little pocket of safety and the rest is history.

It made me understand that you can only really appreciate the fullness of life once you have faced losing it.