Looking for
illustrations concerning friendship, I came across this wonderful
example:
Charles Plumb
was a US Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane
was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted
into enemy hands. He was captured and spent 6 years in a communist
Vietnamese prison. He survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons
learned from that experience!
One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a
restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, "You're Plumb! You
flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You
were shot down!"
"How in the world did you know that?" asked Plumb.
"I packed your parachute,"
the man replied. Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man
pumped his hand and said, "I guess it worked!"
Plumb assured him, "It sure did. If your chute hadn't
worked, I wouldn't be here today."
Plumb couldn't sleep that night, thinking about that
man. Plumb says, "I kept wondering what he had looked like in a Navy
uniform: a white hat; a bib in the back; and bell-bottom trousers. I
wonder how many times I might have seen him and not even said 'Good
morning, how are you?' or anything because, you see, I was a fighter
pilot and he was just a sailor."
Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent at a
long wooden table in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the
shrouds and folding the silks of each chute, holding in his hands each
time the fate of someone he didn't know.
Now, Plumb asks his audience, "Who's packing your
parachute?" Everyone has someone who provides what they need to
make it through the day. He also points out that he needed many kinds
of parachutes when his plane was shot down over enemy territory: he
needed his physical parachute, his mental parachute, his emotional
parachute, and his spiritual parachute. He called on all these supports
before reaching safety.
*
With our plane “shot down” due to our sins and headed for destruction in
enemy territory, God sent Jesus to our rescue. Jesus didn’t “pack our
parachutes;” He is our Parachute. Only He could pay the
price for our sins so that we may “land” safely, not in enemy territory
but in an eternal home in heaven. He paid that price on the cross as He
died for our sins (1 Corinthians 15:1-4).
