CP 252 'Who's packing your parachute?' with a Christ twist.

CP 252 ‘Who’s packing your Parachute?’ with a Christ twist.

Hello friends. This week I’ve been itching to share with you an insight that came after reading the story below about a man and his parachute. It arrived in my inbox and I did what I have taught myself to do, that is, check out whether the story is true. It is. You can find references to it on Google under “Who’s packing your parachute?” Anyway, here is the story:

“Charles Plumb, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, was a jet fighter pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected & parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured & spent six years in a Communist prison.

He survived that ordeal & now lectures about lessons learned from that experience. One day, when Plumb & his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up & 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 & gratitude. The man pumped his hand & 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 might have looked like in a Navy uniform-a Dixie cup hat, a bib in the back, and bell bottom trousers. I wondered how many times I might have passed him on the Kitty Hawk. I wondered how many times I might have seen him and not even said ‘good morning’, or ‘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 on a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship carefully weaving the shrouds & 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. Plumb 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, & his spiritual parachute.”

The story got me thinking in a number of different directions. One obvious one is that Australia provides a wonderful well-packed parachute for anybody who is sick, has an accident, loses a job, needs an education and so on. Regardless of all our grumbling, our transport systems, agricultural systems, distribution systems, health, service and education systems, welfare systems, financial systems, and political and legal systems, are as good as you get in the whole wide world. Relative to most others we are blessed with high quality infrastructure! All of this is what the Lord’s Prayer seeks as “Daily Bread”. What a parachute! (For the asylum seekers?)

It struck me too that the churches are called to be the providers of ‘parachute’ for the lost. Not that we are the parachute. Rather, we are the human channel through which the Spirit of God can activate the chute. The Lord gives his Word. It comes to us via someone’s preaching or teaching or witness or song. When it comes to us, the Spirit gives faith to a sin-burdened heart and we believe, and we have a parachute which sustains us in this life and conveys us into the eternal life of the kingdom of Heaven. Let me give you an example. Kate Koob was one of only two female American diplomats among the more than 50 taken prisoner when the USA Embassy was overrun in Iran in 1979. Did she fear for her life? Of course. Did she have a parachute? Yes indeed! She was sustained for those 444 days in captivity by her Lord who brought to her remembrance all the scripture she knew from home, Sunday School, Confirmation and Study. And day by day, in circumstance after circumstance, hymn verse upon hymn verse came to mind to sustain her in  heart, soul and spirit. She knew without a doubt that the Lord Jesus was with her every moment, and His Spirit lived within her heart. The parachute worked!

Then came clarity of revelation. It was tempting to think the pious thought that Jesus provides the parachute which carries us in the Father’s embrace but that is not correct. He does not provide a parachute… He is the parachute! Think of some of those wondrous texts… You were baptised into Christ… There is therefore, now, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus… If anyone is in Christ that person is a new creation… Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God which is ours in Christ Jesus our Lord. There are dozens of such ‘in Christ Jesus’ texts. He is my parachute. I am endlessly grateful for that freedom… that grace-full gift.

The best moment for me came a little later. Here’s a truth… Jesus Christ could be my / our parachute because he chose, quite deliberately and out of love, not to activate his own parachute. Remember the taunts? ‘Ho. Ho. Ho. If you’re the Son of God, come down from that cross. Hahaha!’ He chose not to, not because he could not, but because, for our sake, he would not! In the garden he had already told his disciples that he could summon 12 legions of angels… You know, the song says ‘It was my sin that held him there.’ It wasn’t my sin… it was his love that held him there. Amazing is it not? Jesus Christ is my eternal parachute because he chose not to use his own. His death destroyed the power of Satan. His resurrection destroyed the power of death. Wow!

Be Blessed in Him… Fred