A Thought for the Day – 056 – Crashed at sea
No doubt in my mind! A woman of virtue does not need all of the
attributes found in Proverbs 31:10-31, she only needs her husband who sees the gift
of grace that God provides through her; gifts that exceed the value of a ruby. Because
she fears the LORD with the fruit of her hands, she will know her husband’s
praises because there is no displeasure in his bones. Proverbs 12:4
Comments and challenges
What sort of life would we
have if everything went right? You and I do not know a day like that but this does
not give us the green light however to overlook the wrong. This thought reminds
me of the very first water recovery I was involved in just off the coast of
Spain in 1964. Our destroyer, the one we talked about yesterday was heading for
Rota, Spain when we got word that a plane had crashed into the water; we were
asked to search the crash site for the pilot before entering port.
The pilot; a Navy officer
was spotted floating face down so our captain sent our small whaleboat out to retrieve
the body. The procedure was to place our diver in the water who would secure a
rope around the body and bring it aboard and return to the ship. Since this
procedure is dangerous and not practiced much our corpsman that was aboard the
small boat and in charge, chose not to put the diver in the water.
This proved to be a
mistake, in trying to secure the dead pilot with the rope from inside the
whaleboat we bumped the body with the boat and knocked the air out of the lungs
and our pilot disappeared into the deep. At this point all efforts to retrieve
the man were lost. It is always necessary to follow the standard operating
procedures in any military evolution, our Corpsman who feared losing the diver
via rope entanglement chose to follow his emotional fears and failure was
certain.
Naval Air Station Rota,
Spain did not send us a “well done” message after our ship’s message informed
them what had happened. In fact; the Commanding Officer of the Air Station had
our ship banded from entering the port at Rota, claiming that we were incompetent.
I do not think the Captain was wrong in this and certainly the base personnel
would be overwhelmed with anger, and our crew could have experienced harm when
going to the Air Base for duty free purchases at the exchange.
Looking at the parable of
the lost sheep in Luke 15:4-7; I am reminded of the universal church of our day
that is failing to fulfill the standard operating procedure that God provides
in His Word. The world (a military operation for God) in which we live is a
crash site of sin. In Matthew 28:18-20 we who are saved are given orders to go
and save, to teach and to baptize those who are approaching their final and
eternal rest. All of the unsaved are spiritually dead; all have fallen short of
the runway. Romans 3:23.
What will you do today? For
the physically dead we can do nothing, but there is hope for the recovery of
the living lost and there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who
repents, God expects one hundred percent, or all of the lost sheep, so what do
you think? Have we missed a few?
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