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(A Skydiving Story)
Have you ever been skydiving? Would you like to know what it's like? This is a true story.
I've jumped three times, all solo, and I'd do it again. Don't worry - any potential for injuries are greatly minimized by the mandatory training you receive before your first solo jump. Yes, there's training required. Wouldn't you rather have it that way? If not for the jumping, at least for the landing? You train all day then you make your first jump right afterwards.
The jumpmaster is the experienced jumper who makes sure we novices don't mess up, and he or she gets to jump for free after all the others jump out of the plane first. In other words, if anyone refuses to jump, the jumpmaster has to forfeit his/her jump and ride the plane back down with the one who chickened out, which makes the jumpmaster very upset. And afterwards, the humiliation will make you wish you had jumped to your death instead. At least that's what our jumpmaster told us as we followed him out of the training center toward the airstrip.
Our little group crammed into the little plane. Once inside and seated on the floor with my wide-eyed fellow jumpers, second-thoughts flooded in as I focused on our pilot. My first thought was, I'm ready to jump right now! He reminded me of a semi-crazed Viet Nam veteran chopper side gunner-turned-hippie that I had met once in a drug deal back in the day. As he started the engine, the roar of the plane's prop was overcome only by the blasting anthem of Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze. Now I'm scared, I thought. This all felt a little too "unregulated" for me!
We took off and climbed to 3,000 feet way too steeply in my opinion. Once we levelled off my heart resumed beating as I thought, God Himself is surely with us! Our jumpmaster opened the gull-wing door, the wind rushing in around 70 knots, to determine when we should start jumping so that we would all land somewhere within the cleared airfield. As I watched him, I thought, Pleeez see some reason we can't do this today. But wait, I don't want to ride this thing down with "Gunner" at the controls, either. Maybe jumping will be safer.
After a few seconds our pied piper looked up directly at me and said, "Get ready!" My mind replays that fateful moment in slow-motion. I had pre-determined that at this command I would operate from that point forward as a mindless machine. I did this by resolving in my heart that I would be jumping to my death! To this day, it still amazes me what a simple resolution that was for me to make!
Once successfully positioned outside the plane like an obedient robot, I heard the jumpmaster's command that, as far as I knew, would be the last word I'd ever hear in this world: "Go!" I jumped as required, and once my parachute opened I became instantly spell-bound! It was a sensation I'd never felt before or since. I wanted the moment to never end!
My touchdown roll, which happens faster than the mind can register, must have been fine; suffice it to say that there was no pain! I'm not sure I've ever felt more alive at any other time in my life, before or since, than I did as I gathered my parachute and began heading back to the airport. I can still feel my heart in my throat as I laughed out loud, which was my only way of restraining the tears of joy that weren't supposed to happen to a "manly" man. Approaching the training center, my mind was reluctantly brought back to earth only by the jubilant congratulations of my friends that had come with me to watch.
Then after returning my equipment, crash helmet unharmed, my jumpmaster came over to me to present me with his smiling handshake and my Basic Jump Training Course successful completion (read: He's still alive!) certificate, after which my friends and I went home and celebrated.
All joking aside, skydiving is one of the safest and most thrilling sports known to mankind. All of the instructors and veterans of the sport are very seriously dedicated to ensuring that every jumper has a safe, truly exciting and rewarding experience every time. I highly recommend it, and I guarantee that it's a memory you'll keep with you the rest of your life.
Sometimes, in order to find life, you have to let go of it and take a flying leap of faith...
Now think of the pilot as being the devil, God being the jumpmaster and Jesus being the parachute, and consider the striking parallel.
"For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it." - Jesus
"God is ready to assume full responsibility for the life wholly yielded to Him." - Andrew Murray
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