- Genesis 17:18 (NKJV) And Abraham said to God, “Oh, that Ishmael might live before You!”
One of the most haunting stories I’ve ever read was recorded in Kerry and Chris Shook’s book: One Month to Live. They write:
“Mount Everest is over 29.000 feet tall, but when you reach 26,250 feet, you enter what they call the death zone. There the latitude is so high it can’t sustain human life. The body is unable to acclimate to such a low level of oxygen, so if you stay in the death zone too long, you die. That’s what happened to a climber in May 2006. He was left by climbers in the death zone while they ascended to the top of Everest. All the people who passed him realized he was in trouble, but they assumed he was part of another team and someone else would rescue him.
Not long after that tragedy, another climber, Lincoln Hall, was found in the death zone. He was rescued by a party of four climbers and eleven Sherpas, who gave up their own summit attempt to stay with Hall and descend with him. Hall later fully recovered. What made the difference between the survival of one and the death of the other? Unselfish teamwork.”
On this day that we honor those that gave their lives serving our great country let’s remember it is one thing to die because you were willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice for a noble cause, but it is another thing to die because you became trapped in a “death zone” and no one reached out to help.
I suspect that all around us there are people – young and old – that are trapped in an emotional and literal death zones; alone, forgotten, forsaken – dying a little every day. On this day that we honor our noble dead; let’s also commit ourselves to living in such a way that some will not have to die before their rightful time.
The ONE THING 