Squinting as I looked toward the sun to find the airplane two miles
overhead, I watched as Adam jumped out and started his free fall. He was
smaller than an ant silhouetted against the bright blue sky. The free fall
looks pretty slow from below, but the skydiver is actually falling through
the air at two hundred fifty feet per second. Between the time Adam
jumped out of the plane and the time the parachute opened, he had free-
fallen a distance greater than twenty one-hundred-story buildings stacked
end to end. That’s a lot of down elevator. Adam explained to me with a
wink that all he needs to do to get the parachute to deploy is to reach
behind him while he’s falling at 140 mph and find a small hacky sack ball
connected to the main parachute to throw out. I always imagined if it
were me doing the reaching, it wouldn’t be a hacky sack I’d find.
If the main parachute comes out, it gives a huge tug as it snaps full of
air. If it doesn’t, I suppose it would look just like zooming in on Google
Earth really fast. I know how forgetful Adam can sometimes be, so as he
fell I found myself shouting from below, “Pull the chute! Pull the chute!
Pull the chute!” and reaching behind myself as I did. After what always
seemed like way too long, I would see the parachute open and hear Adam
yelping with excitement and gliding in figure eights back to the grass
field near the runway.
Some people listen to Christmas carols only in December, but I listen to
them all the time. They also read the Christmas story only once a year. I
read it every couple of months. It tells us God said, “The virgin will
conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel.” A
couple of verses later it says they “gave him the name Jesus.. .” At first,
I wondered if perhaps Mary had twins.
Immanuel means “God with us.” As a father, I know what it feels like
to want to be with your children. When God sent Jesus into the world, He
demonstrated He didn’t just want to be an observer in the lives of the