Sunday, April 28, 2013


This temporary life

Chris and I recently listened to an excellent sermon by our favorite Bible teacher, Jack Crabtree, in which he discussed this parable from the 12th chapter of Luke:

     "The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.' Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry."'
     But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'
     "This is how it will be with those who store up things for themselves but are not rich toward God."

Jack's sermon said the man's mistake was not in storing up grain, but in making the things of this world important instead on focusing on God and life in His eternal kingdom. When the man's life ends unexpectedly, he is prepared to live many years on earth in comfort, but he is not ready for heaven. Scripture also reminds us to be ready to meet our maker because he will come unexpectedly, "like a thief in the night."

Last week, Chris and I sat behind Willy at church. This week we attended his memorial service. No one knew he would die suddenly from a heart attack, but we all know he believed in the promises of God and was sold out for Jesus. He was ready to die at any time. Chris also lost his aunt, Mary, this week. She died after a short battle with cancer. And yesterday, we rode our dirtbikes up Mauna Kea and explored wreckage of a military fighter jet that, years ago, crashed into the mountain. I doubt the pilot expected the plane to crash before take off. We need to be ready. Everyone dies so this seems pretty obvious, yet it's easy, at least for me, to get distracted by the here and now instead of laying up treasure in heaven. The Bible says, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. God has so many awesome things in store for those who belong to Christ, I hope this post encourages you to chase after God and His kingdom.
Chris inspects wreckage of some sort of military fighter jet we found at approx. 11,500 feet elevation on Mauna Kea.

Chris and Christoph examine the evidence and try to piece together what happened when the plane went down.

4 comments:

Andrew Cooper said...

It is a navy RF-8 reconnaissance aircraft that crashed in 1974. The pilot's remains were recovered at the site.

Andrea said...

Wow, thanks for the information. I did a Google search but couldn't find anyting about the crash.

konabish said...

A sad story indeed. When emergency crews recovered the Crusader jet pilot's remains, the poor weather apparently forced them to leave. At a later date a private helicopter pilot who saw the wreckage from the air hiked-in to the see the site. He found there were still human remains there. A military recovery team was notified, and when they returned they worked the scene for 3 days, recovering not only remains but personal effects. That should never have happened. And I can't understand why some much crash debris remains. I expect that over the years it has triggered more than one well-meaning false alarm.

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