Giving Thanks for Sacrifice

 Since I was a boy, one of my heroes has been Eddie Rickenbacker.  Born in 1890, Rickenbacker was a race driver in the teens of 1900 and raced in the first Indy 500’s.  This led to him becoming a fighter pilot during World War I where he was the U.S. Ace of Aces by shooting down the most German aircraft.  After the war, he started a car company, Rickenbacker Motors, and owned and operated Indianapolis Motor Speedway until 1945.  Then he became the president of Eastern Air Lines.  He was a mover and a shaker in the world of automobiles and aviation.  Through his years, he had many brushes with death, but survived them all before passing away in 1973.  The most notable of his brushes with death is when he was lost at sea for 26 days floating in a life raft following a plane crash in 1942 while delivering a secret message to General Douglas MacArthur on behalf of the Secretary of War and President Roosevelt.

This story is told well by author Max Lucado’s "In the Eye of the Storm", pp.221, 225-226. 

It happened every Friday evening, almost without fail, when the sun resembled a giant orange and was starting to dip into the blue ocean.

Old Ed came strolling along the beach to his favorite pier. Clutched in his bony hand was a bucket of shrimp. Ed walks out to the end of the pier, where it seems he almost has the world to himself. The glow of the sun is a golden bronze now.

Everybody's gone, except for a few joggers on the beach. Standing out on the end of the pier, Ed is alone with his thoughts...and his bucket of shrimp.

Before long, however, he is no longer alone. Up in the sky a thousand white dots come screeching and squawking, winging their way toward that lanky frame standing there on the end of the pier.

Before long, dozens of seagulls have enveloped him, their wings fluttering and flapping wildly. Ed stands there tossing shrimp to the hungry birds.  As he does, if you listen closely, you can hear him say with a smile, 'Thank you. Thank you.'

In a few short minutes the bucket is empty. But Ed doesn't leave.  He stands there lost in thought, as though transported to another time and place.

When he finally turns around and begins to walk back toward the beach, a few of the birds hop along the pier with him until he gets to the stairs, and then they, too, fly away. And old Ed quietly makes his way down to the end of the beach and on home.

If you were sitting there on the pier with your fishing line in the water, Ed might seem like “a funny old duck,” as my dad used to say. Or, "a guy who's a sandwich shy of a picnic," as my kids might say. To onlookers, he's just another old codger, lost in his own weird world, feeding the seagulls with a
bucket full of shrimp. 

To the onlooker, rituals can look either very strange or very empty. They can seem altogether unimportant....maybe even a lot of nonsense.

Old folks often do strange things, at least in the eyes of Boomers and Busters.

Most of them would probably write Old Ed off, down there in Florida. That's too bad. They'd do well to know him better.

His full name: Eddie Rickenbacker. He was a famous hero back in World War II. On one of his flying missions across the Pacific, he and his seven-member crew went down. Miraculously, all of the men survived, crawled out of their plane, and climbed into a life raft.

Captain Rickenbacker and his crew floated for days on the rough waters of the Pacific. They fought the sun. They fought sharks... Most of all, they fought hunger. By the eighth day their rations ran out. No food. No water. They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where they were.

They needed a miracle. That afternoon they had a simple devotional service and prayed for a miracle. They tried to nap. Eddie leaned back and pulled his military cap over his nose. Time dragged. All he could hear was the slap of the waves against the raft.

Suddenly, Eddie felt something land on the top of his cap.

It was a seagull!

Old Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly still, planning his next move. With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed to grab it and wring its neck.  He tore the feathers off, and he and his starving crew made a meal - a very slight meal for eight men - of it. Then they used the intestines for bait.  With it, they caught fish, which gave them food and more bait...and the cycle continued. With that simple survival technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until they were found and rescued (after 24 days at sea.)

Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never forgot the sacrifice of that first life-saving seagull.  And he never stopped saying, “Thank you.”  That's why almost every Friday night he would walk to the end of the pier with a bucket full of shrimp and a heart full of gratitude.

We have one who sacrificed His life so that we could LIVE a life of forgiveness, fulfillment, abundance, service, love and joy!  May each day, we find a way to “throw our shrimp” to Him and say, “Thanks.”

Dean's photo of portrait of Eddie Rickenbacker at National Air and Space Museum

Rickenbacker's Army Air Corps uniform

Little Things Can Have a HUGE Impact

Photo by Dean A. Johnson

In his book, Messy Spirituality, Michael Yaconelli tells the story of small, tiny, acts by people that have a HUGE impact. 

During the last months of World War II, the British conducted daily bombing raids over Berlin.  The bombers would take off from an airstrip in England and fly surrounded by smaller fighter planes whose job it was to keep German fighters from attacking the bombers, which were easy targets.

One night after a successful bombing raid, as they were heading for the safety of England, the bombers were attacked by a large group of German fighter planes. Somehow, during the dogfight, one bomber found itself flying alone with no protection, and suddenly, a German fighter appeared out of nowhere.  The crew of the bomber watched as the German plane moved closer and closer, until finally, it was in range.  They prepared for the worst and watched helplessly as tracer bullets began spitting from the fighter.  Bullets whizzed by them, over and under until THUD!  THUD!  THUD!  THUD!  THUD!  Five bullets slammed into the fuselage of the bomber near the gas tank.  The crew braced for the explosion, but nothing happened.  They could see fuel pouring from the bullet holes, but there was no explosion.  Miraculously, they were able to make it back to their base and get off the plane.

A few hours after they had landed, one of the mechanics showed up in the crew’s barracks.  He had found five bullets inside the fuel tanks, crumpled but not exploded.  He handed them to the pilot.  The pilot carefully opened the shells and to the crew’s amazement found each one empty of gunpowder.  Inside one was a tiny wad of paper.  When he unfolded the paper, he found a note which read,

“We are Polish POWs – forced to make bullets in factory.  When guards do not look, we do not fill with powder.  Is not much, but is best we can do.  Please tell family we are alive.

The note was signed by four Polish prisoners of war.

Five tiny bullets, out of millions and millions of bullets made during the war, made all the difference for the crewman of a British bomber...

…Spirituality is about doing the tiny work of God, little acts, small responses to God’s presence in our lives…Tiny becomes huge when Jesus is involved.”  (Michael Yaconelli, Messy Spirituality (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2002), 108-109. 

Every day, consider how your small acts of today can impact someone else tomorrow.  With God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit in our lives, we are asked to perform small, tiny, even miniscule acts of kindness to others just as Jesus did as He walked in the small area of the world in Jerusalem.  As Michael Yaconelli says, “Tiny becomes HUGE when Jesus is involved.”

Paying Attention

Photo by Dean Johnson

In late April 2015, Corporate Chaplains of America hosted a regional training conference in Dallas, Texas for us chaplains.  During the conference, Matt Baldwin spoke to us from Psalm 51.  What caught my attention was Psalm 51:3-6 and 10-12;

“For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned

And done what is evil in your sight…

 

…Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;
you taught me wisdom in that secret place.

“Create in me a pure heart, O God, 

and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” (NIV)

Matt related a story from his life that reminded us to pay attention to when God speaks to us in the small things because they can have big consequences.  Matt’s story reminded me of a story from my own life.  In 1984, my paternal grandmother, Grandmother McVay, was in poor health.  During the month of August, I kept thinking, “I need to write a letter to Grandmother.”  I kept putting it off because I was busy with my high school studies, high school band and my Boy Scout troop.  This feeling became more and more intense until one morning; I awoke from my sleep writing the letter in my head.  Once awake, I joined my mother for breakfast and was told that Grandmother had passed away.

Immediately, I thought, “That’s why that letter came to me so vividly.”  I was disappointed that I hadn’t written the letter, however, my dad’s twin sister, Aunt Joyce DID write a letter to Grandmother.  This letter expressed many things that I had been thinking.  It was a beautiful expression from daughter to mother of the extraordinary example of womanhood and motherhood that she represented.

Now, when I sense God saying to me, “Send them a note of what they mean to you.”  I try to get on it as quick as possible. 

Every day, God is speaking to us that provide us guidance and protection.  It may come in a message as we are driving such as, “Take a different route today.” To keep me out of an accident.  It could be a red light that slows me down that prevents injury up ahead.  He could be telling us something in caring for our children such as, “Move that hot coffee mug away from the edge of the counter.”  So that toddler James doesn’t reach up and grab it, spill it and burns him.  It could be to pray for someone – RIGHT NOW.

There are many other examples and I would love to hear yours as well.  We have to pay attention to when God speaks to us, be steadfast in our action knowing that we are prone to make transgressions.   Seek Him, pay attention and He will give us the wisdom we need when we need it.