What the Midway Taught Me about Spiritual Growth

This week I am visiting my folks who are on vacation in Coronado, California…right next to San Diego. Yesterday I left Philadelphia in the middle of a snowstorm and by evening was walking on the beach in shorts and a t-shirt. Amazing! Even now I am writing this looking out over the Pacific Ocean.

Today I had the opportunity to tour the Midway, an aircraft carrier built in 1945. Now it is a floating battleship museum.

The tour was long…really long…I think I walked up and down thousands of steps. The thing about it is, all over the ship, on every level, throughout the passageways and rooms, were pictures of life aboard the Midway. Picture after picture I kept looking at these guys thinking…most of them are dead!

Do you think that is bizarre? Who tours a battleship and keeps thinking most of the guys in the pictures are dead?

But then an interesting thing happened. I came to the chapel. I learned that on Sunday mornings, a helicopter would transport the Clergy to all the ships in the carrier group to hold services for the men. They called the helicopter the “Holy Helicopter.”

The whole day reminded me of the importance of our relationship with Jesus. In Acts 16, when the jailer asked Paul and Silas, “What must I do to be saved?” Paul and Silas answered, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.”

It is sobering to think most of the men I saw in pictures today are dead. Yet it is of great encouragement to know that those who believed in the Lord Jesus are alive with Him at this very moment.

I think of the chaplains riding each Sunday throughout the carrier group in their “Holy Helicopter.” Definitely time well spent helping young men to understand the importance of receiving Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

I tend to focus on your personal spiritual growth, but today I want to ask you this: What are you doing for the spiritual growth of others?