Living Dangerously

Some memories of Vietnam never leave me. They are so sharp it seems like they happened yesterday.

A few of my enlisted men had come across what they thought was a dud (inactive) enemy grenade, “a souvenir.” They were playing with it in their tent one night tossing it back and forth to one another as they sat on their cots. It fell short as one of the men reached to catch it. Landing in front of his legs and suddenly going off. The resulting blast took the lower legs and forearms off the sergeant who was attempting to catch it.

I met up with him in our Mash hospital tent operating room. He was due to leave Vietnam in two short weeks and immediately married upon his return to America. Now he just wanted to die, instead of returning maimed to his fiancé.

These friends had no idea they were playing around with a lethal device. They had been lulled into a complacency that proceeded to explode in their face. There are so many in this life who have been convinced they are playing around with something quite harmless, when it is quite the opposite.

You and I forget this world is actually a battlefield whether you consider it so or not. The enemies on it are both physical and spiritual; seen and unseen. Complacency can lead to lethal results.

The enemy that causes your fall can be a thing or a person. It can be a drug, legal or illegal, but still addictive; alcohol, pornography, crime, a get rich quick scheme, or just an indifference to the Savior. Often the thing or activity appears quite harmless, but is certainly not.

The antidote for you is to first acknowledge you are on a battlefield, always. Satan truly is prowling around like a roaring lion seeking who he may devour.

But even awareness of living in a dangerous world cannot fully protect you. You need the strongest of antidotes. And that is near proximity to the best friend of your best dream. There is only one: Jesus Christ. No one else can keep you from falling. No one else in the world!

Drawing near to Him in soul and mind is actually your only hope. He can keep you from falling, as it says in Jude (Jude 24-25). Or pick you up when you do. And no one can get so close to you as He. Live because He lives.

“Since my eyes were fixed on Jesus, I’ve lost sight of all beside; so enchained my spirit’s vision, looking at the Crucified.””

(4th verse of Mary James’ hymn, “All For Jesus!,” 1889)