Leap of Faith
Fear doesn’t get a vote. (M.H. Puccini)
Paratroopers in World War 2
The night before D-Day, the allies dropped American and British paratroopers behind enemy lines in France. Their mission? Hinder the Germans from sending in reinforcements to the coast during the next day’s invasion.
Every paratrooper understood that if the D-Day invasion didn’t succeed, they’d be trapped in Nazi-occupied France, with no hope of rescue.
During one of his sermons, Tony Evans proclaimed
Faith is in your feet, not your feelings.
His words are certainly true about leaps of faith. But it was also true of the paratroopers who jumped out of allied planes into the darkness on June 5th, 1944. That night, there was a heavy fog. Unfortunately, while the Germans couldn’t see the allied planes, they heard them. So immediately the Nazi soldiers began firing anti-aircraft guns. Tracer rounds filled the sky. In response the planes tried to avoid being hit by speeding up and/or climbing to much higher altitudes. This had the bad effect of scattering the individual paratroopers over a much wider area.
Under perfect conditions, the textbook goal would be for the pilot to drop his paratroopers 600 feet above the ground while traveling at 90 miles an hour. This parameter guaranteed the soldiers bailing out of the plane would all end up landing close together and reach the ground very quickly.
It didn’t happen that way.
Out of Options
As soon as each paratrooper jumped, he was no longer in control. He was at the mercy of:
- A faulty chute.
- Enemy anti-aircraft fire.
- Strong winds and turbulence.
- The round parachute the army used couldn’t be steered, so the jumper might:
- Land within feet of Nazi soldiers.
- Get tangled in tree branches or powerlines.
- Smash into buildings..
- Drown during a water landing, because each man was weighed down with over 120 pounds / 54.4 kg of heavy equipment.
Terrifying Helplessly floating in the air, the paratrooper only regained control if he landed safely in a good spot.
The Spiritual Point
When Jesus calls you to jump out in faith, it always feels risky and stressful. Because if the Lord doesn’t show up, you’re going to crash disastrously.
Yet we are called to live a life of faith.
So jump and don’t give fear a vote.
This image of paratroopers leaping from the plane came from Pixabay.com.
Resources:
Read about the development of the U.S. Army’s parachute.
