Charles Plumb was a US Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. After flying 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent six years in a communist Vietnamese prison. He survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from that experience.

One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, “You’re Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk!  You were shot down!”

“How in the world did you know that?” asked Plumb.

“I packed your parachute,” the man replied. Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man pumped his hand and said, “I guess it worked!”  Plumb assured him, “It sure did. If your chute hadn’t worked, I wouldn’t be here today.”

That night, Plumb couldn’t sleep, thinking about that man. He said, “I wonder how many times I might have seen him and not even said ‘Good morning, how are you,’ not even given him the time of day because I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor.”  Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent at a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute, holding in his hands every day the fate of someone he didn’t know.

Now, as Plumb lectures, he asks his audience, “Who’s packing your parachute?”  Everyone has a source, a supplier, a wellspring that feeds who they are becoming day after day.

Who do you listen to?  What are your inputs?  What feeds you?  I know a guy who seems to be in a “terminally hacked-off” mode.  The people who feed him are whoever happens to be the angriest person that day – whoever is on a rant, he’s on their side.  People who pack his parachute always seem to be the ones pointing a finger of blame.

There’s another person I know who surrounds himself with people who are fed from the Spirit of God, whose constant message is one of peace and assurance; consequently, his message to others is always one of hope and trust.

Who’s packing your parachute?

Tags: church, community, life group, ministry, small group ministry, small groups

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