When I was still in the single numbers, I had a toy paratrooper. He was about eight inches tall with a folded parachute on his back. This model could be thrown into the air, and on his way down the parachute would deploy and he would float to earth.
Conveniently, my dad’s truck was parked in the dooryard with a bulldozer on the back. I climbed up on the truck, navigated unto the cab of the dozer and flung my paratrooper into the wild blue yonder. As he started down, his chute deployed and he stopped his descent. He started rising, instead of falling, and didn’t stop his ascent. My friend and I followed his flight for half a mile and saw him disappear over a mountain.
One of our neighbors was logging in that area a few years later and came across the spot this unfortunate soldier landed in. There wasn’t enough left of him for a proper burial.
The lesson is that sometimes what you hold so dear can disappear because of forces beyond your control.
James 4:13-14
Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
That which you handle today might be gone tomorrow.
Think about it.
Gary