09/28/24 Weekend Grif.Net - Who Packed Your Parachute?
b...@grif.net
Charles Plumb was a U.S. Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent 6 years in a communist Vietnamese prison. He survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from that experience.
One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man from another table came up and said, "You're Charles 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 and gratitude.
The man pumped his hand and said, "I guess it worked!"
Plumb assured him, "It sure did. If that 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 white hat, a bib in the back, and bell-bottom trousers. I wonder how many times I might have seen him and not even said 'Good morning, 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 at a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds and 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. Sometimes in the daily challenges that life gives us, we miss what is most important. We may fail to say hello, please, or thank you, congratulate someone on something wonderful that has happened to them, give a compliment, or just do something nice for no reason.
Today I'd encourage you to stop and think, "Who's packing MY parachute?" Then DO SOMETHING about it.
[Author Unknown]
~~
Dr Bob Griffin
"Jesus Knows Me, This I Love!"
