Why sit we here until we die? (2 Kings 7:3)
Every pastor has a story or two he used to tell but which was lost because of the years and circumstances. I told this one a few times over twenty years ago and just ran across it in Chuck Swindoll’s book of 1500 stories, The Tale of the Tardy Oxcart.
Back in the summer of 1982, Larry Walters, truck driver, had too much time on his hands without a clue what to do with it all. Mostly, he sat in his back yard drinking beer and thinking. One day he began to wonder what would happen if he were to get himself several surplus weather balloons, tie them together, and go aloft. He could spy on his neighborhood, and wouldn’t that be fun?
That’s why on July 2nd of that year he rigged up forty-two surplus helium-filled balloons from the U. S. Weather Service or some such agency. He anchored them to a backyard lawn chair he’d bought from Sears in San Pedro, California. Before lifting off, he thoughtfully brought along a pellet gun so he could shoot out a few balloons in case he began to fly too high.
To his utter amazement, the balloons lifted off with a bang. In no time flat he was soaring through the sky, eventually reaching 16,000 feet. That’s three miles, y’all.