1 Peter 4:10 (ESV)
As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another,
as good stewards of God's varied grace:
At 12:55 pm the mayday call crackled through the speakers
at the Flight Service Station on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula. The desperate pilot
of a Piper A22, a small single-engine plane, was reporting that he had run out
of fuel and was preparing to ditch the aircraft in the waters of Cook Inlet.
On board were four people, two adults and two young
girls, ages 11 and 12. They had departed two hours earlier from Port Alsworth,
a small community on the south shore of Lake Clark, bound for Soldotna, a
distance of about 150 miles. Under normal conditions it would have been a
routine flight; however, the combination of fierce headwinds and a failure to
top off the fuel tank had created a lethal situation.
Upon hearing the plane’s tail number, the air traffic
controller realized that his own daughter was one of the young passengers
aboard the plane. In desperation himself, he did everything possible to assist
the pilot; but suddenly the transmission was cut off. The plane had crashed
into the icy waters. Four helicopters operating nearby began searching the area
within minutes of the emergency call, but they found no evidence of the plane
and no survivors. The aircraft had been traveling without water survival gear,
leaving its four passengers with even less of a chance to make it through the
ordeal. Fiercely cold Cook Inlet, with its unpredictable glacial currents, is
considered among the most dangerous waters in the world. It can claim a life in
minutes, and that day it claimed four.
Kirk adds these thoughts to the story: For reasons we
will never know, the pilot of that doomed aircraft chose not to use the
resources that were at his disposal. He did not have enough fuel. He did not
have the proper survival equipment. Perhaps he had not taken the time to get
the day’s weather report. Whatever the case, he did not use the resources that
were available; and in this instance the consequences were fatal.
I wonder how many other people have died needlessly like
these four people did? Why, because someone did not manage and or use the
resources they had at their disposal. – I also wonder how many have died
without Jesus -- spiritually speaking from others being poor stewards of the
resources God has placed them in charge of.
Dear Lord, help us be good stewards of what You have
given to each of us. Help us use those talents and gifts to share Your love to
a world that needs it so bad. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
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