Who's Packing Your Parachute?

Recently, I have been troubled by back pain that has made it difficult to write my thoughts for this blog. I have resolved to continue to post each month regardless of circumstances. Please continue to come to these humble pages in the future.

I received this narrative recently in an e-mail from a good friend.

Charles Plumb was a US Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. After 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 6 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."

Plumb couldn't sleep that night, thinking about that man. Plumb says, "I kept wondering what he had looked like in a Navy uniform: a white hat; a bib in the back; and bell-bottom trousers. I wonder how many times I might have seen him and not even said 'Good morning, how are you?' or anything because, you see, 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 each time the fate of someone he didn't know.

You could learn to be a parachute packer. You could learn to align the cords, make the folds, and pack it carefully in its bag. The military teaches technical school classes for parachute packers. You could perhaps even save a life if you executed your task properly. In reality, we are all figurative parachute packers at one time or another in our lives, when we respond to someone’s cry for help, spoken or unspoken, when we speak a kind word, when we offer a loaf of hot bread, when we help move furniture for someone, when we comfort the sick, or when we perform any one of a myriad of selfless acts, we help pack someone’s parachute – their lifeline in this life – perhaps the single thing that they need to keep them on the path to salvation.  The e-mail continued:

Sometimes in the daily challenges that life gives us, we miss what is really important. We may fail to say hello, please, or thank you, congratulate someone when something wonderful has happened to them, offer condolences for difficulties, give a compliment, or just do something nice for no reason.

When we do these things, we help to align some strings or make some folds in another person’s figurative parachute. Sometimes, these small things can be lifesaving. Recently, we ate lunch in a restaurant; our waitress was obviously having a hard day. I paid her a small compliment about her service, and she burst into tears! People at another table had been rude to her, her children had kept her up all night, and she had to come in early for an extra shift. You never know.

Sister Marjorie Pay Hinckley often said: “Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

As I read this narrative, the thought occurred to me that the anonymous parachute packer is evocative of the Savior and the grace he offers us. There are mortal parachutes, both real and figurative, and there is an eternal parachute. Of course, dear reader, you must realize that I am going to suggest that the parachute packing supervisor, manager, and quality assurance inspector for our eternal parachute is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Elder Neal A. Maxwell, in an April 1983 General Conference talk, said the following:

We poorly serve the cause of the Lord, at times, with programmatic superficiality and by our lack of empathy for those who drift in despair .Truly, we live and walk on "a streetful of splendid strangers," whom we are to love and serve even if they are uninterested in us.

It’s easy to help others when they are grateful. It’s easy to reach out when you feel that they reciprocate. It’s easy to love and serve, even strangers, when they have some appreciation for our efforts.

When gratitude is not expressed for a kindness we render, when the recipient offers no thanks for service rendered, the real test of our faith and desire to serve comes. As described in Luke 17:11-19, the Savior encounters ten lepers who wanted to receive the benefit of his healing powers:

And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off:

And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed.

And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan.

And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger. And he said unto him, Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.

So the Lord’s grace and power helped the leper pack his own parachute. The interesting thing is that when we help to pack someone else’s parachute, we are also packing our own parachute. At the end of this mortal sojourn, when we enter the spirit world, all we will take with us is the service we have rendered, the good we have done, and the aid we have offered. Ralph Waldo Emerson said:

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Everything in mortality is transient. The gold we acquire, the accolades we receive, the status we achieve,are flickers in eternity, and are lost when we depart mortality. Only when we lose ourselves, only when we are more intent on helping others pack their parachutes, only when we truly serve, do we create eternal gold. Ethel Percy Andrus (A long-time educator and the first woman high school principal in California, she was also an elder rights activist and the founder of AARP in 1958). said:

What I spent is gone; what I kept, I lost; but what I gave away will be mine forever.

Service to others is the key to eternal salvation. Selfless service, with no thought to reward or recognition, is the epitome of service. George Bernard Shaw said:

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live.

Elder Henry D. Taylor, Assistant to the Council of the Twelve Apostles, told the following story in General Conference of April 1959:

Gratitude, brethren and sisters, results in love, unselfishness, and consideration for others. It has a refining influence, and when expressed, can be a beautiful thing. A recent newspaper account carried an interesting incident:

"The District of Columbia police auctioned off about 100 unclaimed bicycles Friday. `One dollar,' said an eleven year-old boy as the bidding opened on the first bike. The bidding however, went much higher. `One dollar,' the boy repeated hopefully each time another bike came up.

 "The auctioneer, who has been auctioning stolen or lost bikes for 43 years noticed that the boy's hopes seemed to soar highest whenever a racer was put up.

"There was one racer left. Then the bidding mounted to $8.00. `Sold to that boy over there for $9.00,' said the auctioneer. He took $8.00 from his own pocket and asked the boy for his dollar. The youngster turned it over—in pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters—took his bike and started to leave. But he went only a few feet. Carefully parking his new possession, he went back, gratefully threw his arms around the auctioneer's neck, and cried."

The crowd never knew what the old auctioneer did. They didn’t see him render precious service to the boy who wanted that bicycle, but the Lord did. The Lord knows what we do. He is the judge of how well we pack our mortal and eternal parachutes, and how well we perform as we help others pack theirs. An eternal parachute, properly packed, will help us land safely in the Celestial Kingdom, no more to go out.