“Are you having a midlife crisis?” my co-worker asked.
That’s kind of personal, I thought to myself. But in all fairness, I did give them cause to ask. You see, just two weeks earlier I launched myself out of a perfectly good plane.
It all started when a friend told me they’d always wanted to skydive. The only thing preventing them from jumping was someone to go with them.
Considering I’ve never thought about jumping from anything higher than a diving board, it took a lot of thinking to talk myself into going.
However, once I made the decision to jump, a curious thing occurred. After my mental commitment was firmly in place, I suddenly felt the urge to involve others in my crazy scheme. It wasn’t enough for me to experience something radical; I wanted to bring others along on the journey. I wanted a witness to my life experience.
This interesting dynamic of human behavior is one I find in scripture. When something extraordinary happens to us, we want to share the news. Our Creator knows that about us. When He asked the disciples to follow Him, He invited them to witness the extraordinary. The natural result was that the disciples invited others. Take Nathanael for example. Philip went and brought him to Jesus to see this incredible being.
Life with Christ is an extraordinary unforgettable experience. When He called you and me to share the good news with others, He wasn’t asking us to do something hard. He was inviting us to tap into something already built into our nature. We naturally want to share good things!
So that brings me back to what started this story off in the first place: the jump. At 14,500 feet, the plane door slid open and people in front of me began tumbling out of the plane. And suddenly, it was my turn to fly.
I moved to the door with my tandem instructor, sat on the edge of the doorway, leaned my head back and let gravity take over. What a rush.
The freefall experience with the world spread out before me was unforgettable. Then came the moment the parachute opened. When I thought it couldn’t get better, the roar of the wind in my ears disappeared and we floated in near silence, able to take in even more of the verdant Oregon landscape spread out below.
The moment my feet hit the ground I was ready to get back on the plane and do it again, except with even more friends.
The next jump is next weekend. Want to come along??
