We were nine-year-old paratroopers and our aircraft for delivering us over the target was the neighbor’s garage. In the winter when the snow was deep enough, there we were climbing a ladder, walking the peak and yelling “Geronimo” as we sailed through the air to land in the deep snow.
The generation I grew up in venerated the veterans of WW2. My best friend’s father brought a fiddle back from Europe and inside was a pack of Chesterfield cigarettes from the war. To us, those cigarettes were sacred and we would never smoke any of them.
The men and women of that distant era and their sacrifices made it possible for us to enjoy freedom and safety in our generation.
There was another group of individuals that by sacrifice and service gave us the Word of God. It started with the heroes of faith found in Hebrews 11. In the opening of the twelfth chapter, they are described thus:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,
Because of their witness of faith, we as New Testament believers should desire to imitate them, not by jumping off of buildings but offering our bodies as a living sacrifice.
Romans 12:1
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.
Give it some thought and then jump.
Gary