Doing a skydive was not on my bucket list. All right, so I don’t have a bucket list – but if I did, sky-diving would not be on it! So what’s your story then? You just did a skydive, didn’t you?
Well, I recently went with our Spanish friend to the airport, to watch her sky-diving adventure and after she had landed, beaming widely, I remarked how exciting it all looked and what fun and yes, I may have added: ‘I’d like to have a go at that!’ – never thinking that anyone was taking notes and never imagining that somebody would actually go and buy me a ticket as a birthday present! So there I was, the proud owner of an expensive one-way aeroplane ticket inviting me to step out and become a featherless bird for 45 seconds… To be honest, I came to dread the thought of it. When I was teaching my students right up to the day before, I looked down and said under my breath: ‘And you are going to jump out of one of these? – Are you crazy or what?’ So why I hear you say, did I do it? Well firstly I had said I would, and so serious amounts of egg would have been on my face if I backed out. Yes there was always the option of saying: ‘sorry guys, I am scared spitless and I don’t really want to’. That would have been the sensible thing to do and to be honest I would have done it if it weren’t for the second reason:
I had a promise. Yes I remembered it. I had been given a promise and for the promise to be true the parachute had to work. Or even if it didn’t that would be okay too!
I remembered the promise, and how it had come to me one sunny day in the town of Roermont, Holland. I believed the promise, or to be more correct, I believed the one who gave to to me. And I knew to say ‘no’ would mean that I did not believe it. The fact was, I did believe it and I knew that despite how I felt, it would be okay to do that crazy thing.
The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.
The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.Psa 121:7-8
