Gary Connery

"Surviving The Fall"

Let me say at the outset - don't try this at home! But when I read the
headline
about the 42-year-old man diving 2,400 feet out of a helicopter without a
parachute, I had to read more.

It happened yesterday in England when stuntman Gary Connery (no known
relationship to Sean) staged the feat. Thousands were on hand to watch from
a
distance as Connery dropped from the helicopter half a mile above the earth.
Normally a person could not hope to survive a fall from that distance, or
even a
tenth of that distance.

Enabling Connery to pull off the feat without a serious injury were two
factors:
First, he wore a suit that enabled him to glide, rather than free-fall. If
you've ever seen a flying squirrel leap out of a tree, that's what the
stuntman
looked like. By the time he hit the ground he was descending at a rate of
only
15 miles per hour.

The second factor is that he didn't actually hit the ground. He landed on a
carefully arranged stack of 18,600 cardboard boxes. Empty boxes, I might
add,
meaning that the stack formed an effective cushion to break his fall.

Connery's feat is impressive; no doubt about that. But the only way he
could
have survived such a fall involved extraordinary means.

Satan once tried to get Jesus to perform a similar death-defying feat.
Standing
atop the pinnacle of the temple, Satan urged the Son of God to "throw
Yourself
down. For it is written: 'He shall give His angels charge over you,' and
'In
their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a
stone'"
(Matthew 4:6). In one respect Satan was right: Had Jesus given in to the
temptation, residents of Jerusalem would have been talking for days about
this
amazing Man.

But there was a greater Fall Jesus had in mind, and that led Him to reject
the
devil's suggestion. Jesus came to earth on a mission: "For the Son of Man
has
come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10). Mankind had
fallen
because of sin, and without the extraordinary measures taken by Jesus, none
of
us could survive this most lethal of all falls.

In John's gospel we learn of a woman who had been caught in the act of
adultery
(where, by the way, was the man?). Under the Law of Moses, she could have
been
stoned. Jesus, though, saw through the hypocrisy of her accusers, and
eventually they were exposed and all slinked away shamefully. Jesus turned
to
the woman: "Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more" (John 8:11). Her
physical life had been saved. More importantly, her soul was now on course
to
find eternal salvation.

Jesus then spoke these words: "I am the light of the world. He who follows
Me
shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life" (John 8:12).
Walking in
that light, none of us need stumble again.

Without Christ we are all in a state of free-fall. Unless we turn to the
Savior
and accept the extraordinary measures He put in place, we have no hope of
surviving the Fall. While there is time, let us go to Him!

Timothy D. Hall