I went skydiving last week, and it was incredible. I can remember the nerves leading up to it and having the thought of, I may never live to see another day. (As you can see, I did, praise Jesus.) Looking out of the plane and seeing all of God’s creation was breathtaking. Rocketing toward that creation through 14,000 feet was also breathtaking in a different kind of way.
I’ve never met someone who went skydiving and did not highly endorse it. They’ve never said, “Yeah, I went, and it wasn’t that cool.” or, “I was scared out of my mind the whole time.” While I’m sure there are some that didn’t think it was that cool or were scared out of their mind the whole time, the majority speak of it with joy and delight. They say they’d go again today if they had the chance.
And I feel the same. The nerves dissipated when I was tightly strapped to my instructor. His long-time experience of jumping out of moving airplanes reassured my anxiety. The free fall was incredible, but I’ll never forget the relief when that parachute opened up wide above us. (Again, praise Jesus).
And, of course, what kind of blogger would I be if I did not relate this experience to the gospel? It’s hard to pass up a good metaphor.
If Jesus comes to us during our free fall and we say, “Go away Jesus, I don’t need you. I’m sure I can figure out how to land on the ground safely. I can do it myself. I don’t want to stop free falling anyways,” then our hearts are full of pride. You and I both know without a parachute we are going to splat on the ground. d.
But then, after each passing second, the ground gets a bit closer and a bit closer. Worry may start to creep in. What you never thought of before—for the sake of this metaphor, I’m referring to death—now becomes reality. If there is no parachute, no cartoon-like mattress at the bottom (which I am unconvinced would even help in this situation) there is no life after skydiving. Without a saving grace, there is only a grim ending.
So, what you at first thought was fun and wild and adventurous, you now see leads to nothing. It leads to the hard, hard ground that you are currently rocketing toward.
Enter the skydiving instructor. Praise Jesus there was a man with 30 years of experience strapped to my back. He knew exactly when to pull the parachute and how to guide us to the landing area. Without him, I certainly would not be sitting here writing this.
I think of Jesus sort of like a skydiving instructor. He meets us in our wild and sinful ways and straps our back to him. He pulls the parachute to save us from plummeting to our death. We have done nothing to deserve this. We deserve to plummet to the ground, because we were the ones to jump from the plane. Our sinful living does not warrant saving. But John 3:17 says,
“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
This is through God’s grace and mercy that we are allowed a parachute to save our souls. But we must accept this parachute.
If Jesus comes to us during our free fall and we say, “Go away Jesus, I don’t need you. I’m sure I can figure out how to land on the ground safely. I can do it myself. I don’t want to stop free falling anyways,” then our hearts are full of pride. You and I both know without a parachute we are going to splat on the ground.
Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before stumbling.”
We must accept the help we know we need.
And through Jesus, we are safely guided to the end of our lives, whenever that may be. We are given an instructor that is loving, giving, and merciful. He wants to save us from free falling to our destruction. Don’t be too prideful to accept the parachute.
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