Poison in the Air
Friday, April 9, 2021
The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life. Job 33:4, NIV.
It happened one Sunday when I decided to go scuba diving with my fellow student missionaries, Matt, Monica, and Julian. We'd been down about 30 minutes to a depth of 60 feet exploring the wall that rises from the ocean floor and eventually surfaces as the Majuro atoll in the Marshall Islands.
Beginning to feel strange, I motioned to my buddy, Julian, that I was going up. During the trip up I kept checking my gauge so I wouldn't surface too quickly and end up with the bends. Then at about 30 feet I couldn't see my gauge or concentrate. Julian realized I was in trouble and grabbed my arm. At 10 feet I was breathing extremely fast and felt I wasn't getting any air. We finally broke surface, and I spit out my regulator and gasped the fresh air. I inflated my buoyancy compensator and started to float.
Freaking out, I exclaimed, "I can't see!" Everything was blurred. I concentrated on Julian's goggles long enough to finally read the word "tempered" on the glass. I had a headache and felt light-headed. Julian towed me in to shore, and I just sat there on the reef while he went to find our friends.
Later, back at our room, Mr. Lane, the principal, came by and said we shouldn't use our tanks because two tanks had accidentally gotten filled with carbon monoxide when the compressor broke. The man filling the tanks switched to another compressor to finish filling them, not realizing that the tanks held lethal gas. The mistake was discovered when the guy using the other tank passed out in 20 feet of water. His dive buddy brought him up, but he was unconscious for four hours in the hospital. That's when I realized I was lucky to be alive.
And that's when I thought about how lethal the consequences of a little mistake can be. The broken compressor nearly killed two people! Sin is like that. It might not be something others can see or smell, but it can cause death just the same. The fact is, Satan kills, and "the breath of the Almighty gives me life."
Don't wait until sin is choking you to breathe freely from God's Word. It's the only protection against Satan's poisonous gas!
It happened one Sunday when I decided to go scuba diving with my fellow student missionaries, Matt, Monica, and Julian. We'd been down about 30 minutes to a depth of 60 feet exploring the wall that rises from the ocean floor and eventually surfaces as the Majuro atoll in the Marshall Islands.
Beginning to feel strange, I motioned to my buddy, Julian, that I was going up. During the trip up I kept checking my gauge so I wouldn't surface too quickly and end up with the bends. Then at about 30 feet I couldn't see my gauge or concentrate. Julian realized I was in trouble and grabbed my arm. At 10 feet I was breathing extremely fast and felt I wasn't getting any air. We finally broke surface, and I spit out my regulator and gasped the fresh air. I inflated my buoyancy compensator and started to float.
Freaking out, I exclaimed, "I can't see!" Everything was blurred. I concentrated on Julian's goggles long enough to finally read the word "tempered" on the glass. I had a headache and felt light-headed. Julian towed me in to shore, and I just sat there on the reef while he went to find our friends.
Later, back at our room, Mr. Lane, the principal, came by and said we shouldn't use our tanks because two tanks had accidentally gotten filled with carbon monoxide when the compressor broke. The man filling the tanks switched to another compressor to finish filling them, not realizing that the tanks held lethal gas. The mistake was discovered when the guy using the other tank passed out in 20 feet of water. His dive buddy brought him up, but he was unconscious for four hours in the hospital. That's when I realized I was lucky to be alive.
And that's when I thought about how lethal the consequences of a little mistake can be. The broken compressor nearly killed two people! Sin is like that. It might not be something others can see or smell, but it can cause death just the same. The fact is, Satan kills, and "the breath of the Almighty gives me life."
Don't wait until sin is choking you to breathe freely from God's Word. It's the only protection against Satan's poisonous gas!
Used by permission of Health Ministries, North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists.
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