The Army Air Corps during the Second World War maintained Emergency Rescue Squadrons, which were given the very dangerous mission of rescuing, when possible, downed pilots. Knowing these intrepid flyers could themselves, quite easily, be in need of rescue, the Army Air Corps provided each emergency rescue pilot with a bail out kit.
Contained inside a metal canister not much larger than a canteen, this kit held an enormous amount, and variety of stuff: a chocolate bar, chewing gum, bouillon powder, razor blades, fishing line, fish hooks, safety pins, matches, 2 compasses, a saw blade, a whet stone, a mirror, mercurochrome, a sling shot, a hunting spear assembly, sulfa tablets, eye salve, gauze compresses, and cigarettes.
The information I read at the American History museum claims that scores of downed airmen were saved by their bail-out kits during the war, especially in the Asian Theater.
Eight years ago, as we prepared for the new millennium, the near certain crash of our computers, and by extension the death of civilization (such as it was), many Americans prepared their own bail-out kits: bottled water, wind-up radios, canned goods, extra batteries for our game-boys. Six years ago, in the wake of 9/11 we did the same. 14 months ago, in response to the spike in gasoline prices following Hurricane Katrina we hoarded gasoline in 10 gallon tanks (if you could find one to buy). I have a ten gallon tank of gas I paid more than $35 for still sitting in my shed.
We didn’t need any of those things. But we might one day – perhaps one day soon. I hope the folks on the other side of the jet stream who suffered so violently from ice storms last week laid in a good store of non-perishable food items, batteries, and blankets. The climate, both political and meteorological, seems increasingly threatening and unstable.
It must have seemed that way at the end of the first century, especially for a Christian – with Vesuvius blowing, and the Romans increasingly hostile. Thankfully, for the Christian, the apostle Paul had provided them with a bail out kit that he promised would “fully equip” them for “any good work” (II Timothy 3.16-17). In addition to this equipping, this bail-out kit comforts, instructs, challenges, engages, confronts, entertains, guides, and answers the essential questions of life – questions like:
Who are we?
Why are we here?
What is our destiny?
What are we to do?
And especially,
How may we be saved?
It can be small enough to fit into a pocket or purse, and large enough that its print can be read by the poorest eyes. The Bible really is the only guide to the life, the universe, and everything. It is our bail out kit.
In John Ford’s great western The Searchers, one of the party John Wayne is leading gets wounded by a Comanche. Ward Bond, playing a Texas Ranger/ Preacher gives the wounded man his Bible. “Here, hold this,” he says, “It will make you feel good.” It does. It does make you feel good, and grounded, and confident.
But not by holding it, by reading it.
In the beginning, when the world was new, the great pleasure of Adam and Eve was to commune with the voice of God in the cool of the day (Genesis 3.8). That pleasure is still ours today. We may commune with the voice of God in the cool of the evening, in the rosy dawn morning, in the stress and strain of noon-time, and at any hour in between. We may commune with that voice at the kitchen table, in a pew with our brothers and sisters, on the metro, in an apartment in the Green Zone, in a barracks in Fallujah, and in the cold of Northern Afghanistan.
We think of and pray for Steve and Paul constantly, and wait for the day they return home. We happily received O’Dili back last Sunday, but know he will be sent back to Baghdad soon – soon we will pray constantly for his return home. But in this world, the Christian is never really home. We are all, in a sense, behind enemy lines, with a battle to fight on our way back home. Without our bail-out kit we will not survive.
