With Hands Held Open

** As with all of my inspirational stories, I am writing from my Christian perspective. If this offends you, please return next week for a satire story.

As a Christian, two of the hardest things I have had to learn in my life are: 1)  to stand with my hands held open and, 2)  not be in control.

Matthew 6:25–27: Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?  Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?  Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

I’ve got this hummingbird who hangs out at my feeder. His name is Larry. He has an oversized gut.

When he sits on the feeder, it tilts under his weight and the nectar drips out. I can’t understand how a hummer who uses so much energy to fly could get so fat. When he flies off the feeder, he skims across the lawn trying to gain altitude. I don’t know if his wheezing is what I am hearing or the beating of his wings.

Cheryl asked me, “What mix are you putting in the feeder?’

“One part water to four parts sugar.” I answered.

“Well, no wonder. The mix is supposed to be one part sugar with four parts water. You turned him into a sugar junkie.”

You know, I was thinking about it, and I don’t believe that I have ever seen a fat robin or any other fat birds. This is because God provides all they need, not what they want.

Matthew 6:28–30: And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?

31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

In my life, my desire has been to be the controller of my destiny, the creator of amazing things, the self-made man. But what I have come to realize is that my life is a continuous series of gifts God gives and God takes away. An amazing list of gifts that He gives to show what He can do through me. He created me as a Jack of all trades and a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.

You see, in my life God has opened doors. I have misunderstood what He was doing and assumed that an open door was an opportunity which was forever, but almost every time God has said, “It is done. Now you are to move on.”

I say to him, “I’m not ready to leave yet.” 

To which he answers, “To bad. It’s time.”

My response is, “Well what now?”

He always leads me to the next destination.

Let me walk you through my life. We will go back to when I first started believing that my destiny was exactly where I was and what I was doing at the time. These are examples of why I was confused.

1. In high school I fell for a girl who I wanted very much to be more than a girlfriend. This had a tragic ending, as she was killed shortly after we began dating.
2. I was trained as a pilot, first in airplanes, then in helicopters. It was going to be my future, working alongside my dad. Then dad was killed in a helicopter crash and the company which he owned closed down. My career as a pilot ended.
3. I created my own singing group – The Sonrise Gospel Team.  We travelled the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia for seven years. In that time, and since, I have written over 60 songs which have been performed in every imaginable venue: churches, colleges, theaters, weddings, crusades, coffee houses and prisons. I thought I was going to be a performer/ songwriter as a profession. And then it ended.
4. I went on to work at the Intalco Aluminum smelter which was where God allowed me to earn my living and I almost made it to retirement when Alcoa pulled the plug on the company.  I was without a job and went through what I can only compare to withdrawal as I learned how to be a retiree. I am one who believes that a man is defined by what he does. Without a job, I didn’t know who I was anymore.
5. Stories started coming into my head and I wrote them down. I am not a writer. I can only explain the stories as gifts from God. My son-in-law John, and my daughter Kalene, created a blog site for me which I call Mitchellway, and each Saturday I put out a satire or inspirational story for my subscribers. Even though I have written 270 stories, I have no idea how to write stories any more than I know how to write music. They are all gifts and someday God will decide that the stories are done, and they will come no more. And we will again move on.

I also went through a period in my life when I was sure that being an inventor was the way to make my place in the world. These things I applied for patents on:

• The Portable Light-Weight Hunting Tree Stand. It was a great idea, and I got the patent. To prove it worked, I sat all night in an ancient apple tree during a frost and nearly died of hypothermia. Tree stand companies looked at it and tried to steal it. It died.
• The OpenAer Standguard. A plexiglass music stand cover made to protect music from wind and rain during outside concerts. It was patented in the US and Canada. I sold some local and the idea died.
• The Mole Moat was an idea to trap moles. The patent attorney shook his head on this one. It died before any moles did.
• The Mitchell Methane Arrestor. It was a vacuum system connected to a modified toilet seat. When the vacuum was turned on, it drew all unpleasant odors from the bowl, into the vacuum box and through carbon filters which cleaned the air. The glitches in this idea were: 1) the vacuum on the floor next to the toilet had the same decibel level as sitting over the top of a jet engine during takeoff. 2)The vacuum had to be shut off before you could get off the seat. 3)Sitting too long left a nasty mark. 4) Drawing methane gas through the vacuum box, past the sparking vacuum motor caused explosive flashing. Much like the backfire of a car.
• The Osprey Rescue Sling (When There’s No Place To Land and No Time To Waste). The rescue sling was designed to be carried in a bag in light helicopters. If there was a need to lift a person out of an area where the helicopter could not land, the pilot would find a suitable place to land, hook the thirty-foot strap onto the belly-hook of the helicopter, hover over the person and drop the bag out of the helicopter to him. Inside of the bag was a bosun’s chair which the person would sit and buckle himself in. The strap from the helicopter was attached to this chair. The pilot would then lift the helicopter into the air and carry the person below to a suitable landing place.

Of course, I made a prototype but before trying to market it, I needed some advertising brochures. So, to get some advertising photos, I took my good buddy, John Zylstra with me up to Abbotsford airport. John did photo art for his exhibitions at shows and I needed his camera.

A week earlier, I had gone to the airport and had spoken with the owner of the helicopter and told him that I wanted to have some photos taken of me in my sling being suspended under his helicopter. We agreed on a price and set a date for the following Saturday.

When John and I showed up the next Saturday, the owner wasn’t there. Instead, there was another pilot there who said that he would be flying for the job.

There is a hook under the helicopter which opens with a solenoid when the pilot pushes a button on his cyclic. I  clipped my strap into the hook and closed it. I then told the pilot that I had brought some chain and I wanted to chain the hook so it couldn’t open. His response was “No”. If I started swinging under the helicopter, he wanted to be able to drop me.

This should have been a warning to me, but I said, “Okay.”

I said. “I want you to hover me to eight feet so John can get underneath and photograph me in the sling under the helicopter.” I figured, what could go wrong at eight feet?

The pilot started the helicopter and I clipped myself into the bosun’s chair and pulled the strap to its full length out in front of the helicopter. As he lifted the helicopter off the ground, he rose until the strap was tight and he began lifting me into the air. Once I was eight feet up, I saw John beginning to take photos. Then I realized that the helicopter was moving, and we were moving faster, and the faster we moved, the higher he lifted me off the ground. Suddenly, he was flying 40 mph and climbing. He climbed the length of the Abbotsford runway and then he flew to pattern altitude – 800 feet.

Now, here is what happens when you are in a bosun’s chair under a helicopter flying 60 mph at 800 feet hanging by an unsecured hook. You begin worrying a bit.

The first thing that happened is that because my feet were hanging below me, the wind caught them and weathervaned me so that I was facing backwards. This is an uncomfortable feeling because if I drop from 800 feet going backwards, I am going to land on my back, which would hurt. If I dropped facing forward, I could possibly do a front roll and not get hurt.

I began looking for places that I might want to land if I fell. For instance, there was a ditch full of water. I could do a cannonball. It wouldn’t be pretty, but I would survive. I also noticed the top of fir trees, rows of raspberries, even the roof of a hanger . . . all possibilities.

I noticed a seagull that was flying the same direction as I was. (Although he was flying forward, and I was flying backwards). He looked at me and went, “AWK!”

I shrugged my shoulders and yelled, “I know, right?”

The pilot only went around the pattern once. As we flew past the control tower, I noticed the tower operator standing at the window watching me through his binoculars. I waved. I can’t imagine what he was screaming into his radio to the pilot.

As the helicopter lowered me to the ground, John was still shooting pictures. He ran up to me and asked, “Did you intend to do that?”

When the pilot got out of the helicopter, I ran up to him and screamed, “What were you thinking? I asked you to hover, at eight feet.”

“Yeh, sorry,” he said. “It kind of got away from me.”

As it turned out, he was a student pilot who was building his hours so he could get his license.

This verse came to me as I was flying through the Abbotsford skyline like Peter Pan:

Matthew 10:29–31: Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. 30 And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  31 So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

The title of this story is: With Hands Held Open

Each of our lives are different, but for me I have found that God gives me my blessings, gifts, and encouragement. I believe that every good and creative thing in my life has been a gift from God.

Psalms 116:12,13 says: “So now, what can I ever give back to God to repay him for the blessings he’s poured out on me? I will lift up his cup of salvation and praise him extravagantly for all that he’s done for me.”

James 1:17 says: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

But those blessings may only be for a time and then he removes them and moves me on. Why, I can only guess.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 says:

There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

²     a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
³     a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
⁴     a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
⁵     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
⁶     a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
⁷     a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
⁸     a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

I also know that I can misunderstand what I think God’s will is for my life, which is confusing.

James 4:13-15 says: “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you don’t even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’”

God loves us and has a wonderful plan for our lives. God blesses us and wants us to know that he is the giver of those blessings. The hope is that we will realize that the Father desires us to recognize his blessings and that we draw closer in relationship with Him as the loving God that he is.

Alistair Begg wrote: “You will never know Jesus Christ as a reality in your life until you know Him as a necessity.” As the giver of everything.

I think that it is best to keep my hands held open. To be able to receive what God has for me, and to be able to release it when it’s time to be taken away. It is always better that I do not hold tightly to anything that he is planning to remove because he will only tear it out of my hands. Who can fight against God?

Jeremiah 18:4 says: But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.

It is painful being reshaped into something better, but I keep going back to the song that started me in Gospel music. It was written by Andrae’ Crouch and was entitled, “Through it All.” I listened to it over and over. The chorus goes:

“Through it all, Through it all, I’ve learned to trust in Jesus, I’ve learned to trust in God. Through it all, Through it all, I’ve learned to depend upon his word.”

There is no way to learn of faith except through trials.

Lastly, a familiar story found in Job 1:6-21:  

6 One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. 7 The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?”

Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”

8 Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

9 “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. 10 “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. 11 But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”

12 The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.”

Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.

13 One day when Job’s sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother’s house, 14 a messenger came to Job and said, “The oxen were plowing and the donkeys were grazing nearby, 15 and the Sabeans attacked and made off with them. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”

16 While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, “The fire of God fell from the heavens and burned up the sheep and the servants, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”

17 While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, “The Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and swept down on your camels and made off with them. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”

18 While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said, “Your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother’s house, 19 when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them and they are dead, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”

20: At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship. (Did he curse God? No, he worshiped. Did he question God? No, he worshiped.)

21 Then he said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.”

I have found that as God removes me from one adventure, he places me in another because He is always in control.

Consider living before God with your hands held open.

** All scripture verses are from the New International Version Bible

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