The Love God Survival Kit

Julianne Koepcke was seventeen years old when she was in a plane crash. The small airplane, a Lockheed Electra, was flying over the Peruvian jungle on Christmas Eve, 1971. Julianne had just been to the local Roman Catholic Church. She was wearing her white confirmation dress and high heels and was sitting next to her mother on the plane when lightning struck, causing the plane to suffer extensive structural failure. They were going down and the plane was coming apart at the seams.

Julianne would later describe that her initial feeling was not panic but wonder as the plane went down. "I noticed that the trees of the jungle looked like cauliflowers," she would later describe. She was awake and aware, not screaming or vomiting or crying but just noticing everything around her.

Julianne awoke in the dark. She was still strapped into her seat and her mother was nowhere to be seen. It was raining hard. Julianne hid under her seat to protect herself from the rain and waited for daylight.

When the sun rose, Julianne made up her mind to get up and find help. She had no survival gear, just a few pieces of candy and a small cake in her pocket. She had no idea how to live in a jungle, but her father had told her that if she was ever lost to go downhill and try to find water, that people were most often found near or around water.

Julianne walked for eleven days. She walked in the cooler parts of the day, and rested in the heat. Tropical insects bore under her skin to lay their eggs, hatched, then dug out of her body. Leeches drained her blood. She lost her shoes and never found her mother, but she kept on wondering at the beauty of the jungle. She did not succumb to self-pity or fear. She just focused, leaving room in her mind for whatever might happen next.

Of the twelve people that survived the initial crash, Julianne was the only one who made it out of the jungle alive. She eventually stumbled into a shack where some fishermen lived and they took her to a local doctor. All the other passengers who survived the crash followed the rules and waited to be rescued. And all of them died.

A few weeks ago, my son Max asked his dad a really hard question. "Dad," he said, "Who do you love more, me or God?"

JD came to me wondering if he said the right thing. This is what he said...

"Max, I love God more than I love you. That's what the Bible tells me to do. But the weird thing about loving God first is that it makes me love you more, not less. Loving God doesn't take away any of my love for you. In fact, it gives me more love for you. It's like some amazing, mysterious mathematical equation."

Jesus tells us today that we must love God more than father or mother or son or daughter. To love anyone or anything more than God is to disobey God's great commandment. And to do so will throw your life and your relationships into turmoil and disarray. Son against father. Daughter against mother. Family members at war with each other, vying for who loves who the most. But how in the world can we put our family or our loved ones second? It seems so cold. So hard.

That is the mystery of God that I would like to talk to you about today. You see, love for God is like no other love. It awakens the mind and expands the heart. To love God first is to put your life in the correct order. It is to awaken your consciousness to the supremacy of God above all else. The love of God does not compete with the love of others. It heightens all other love. It makes you love others even more.

Julianne survived the jungle because she kept awake. At the base of her consciousness, there was this awe, this awareness that comes from the love of God and of life itself. In his book, Deep Survival, Lawrence Gonzales looks at the minds of survivors. After extensive research, Gonzales comes to the conclusion that those who survive natural or man-made disasters possess a quality of awareness, a kind of humility. They do not think they know everything that there is to know about their surroundings or about nature. They remain humble, noticing that it is God, or powers beyond their control, that will determine their destiny.

Jesus said, "Those who find their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake will find it." Julianne was willing to lose her life, to let go of her mother, to let go of her self-pity, her panic, everything she knew. She was somehow able to let go, step outside of her grief and pain, and trust in something, someone beyond herself. That was ultimately her salvation. The other passengers who survived the initial crash held onto the way that they thought things should go. They froze in panic and stayed put, waiting for someone to come and rescue them. And they all perished.

Your life belongs to God and God alone. If you cling to your loved ones as if they are your first priority, your relationships will suffer. In fact, you will never truly love anyone. Let me say that again: if God is not your first love, you will never truly love anyone. If you try to craft your life into the way you think it should be, you will lose it. Let go of control. Love God first and above all things. In every decision that you make, ask this: "God, how can I best love you?" Love is not a feeling. It is a decision that you make, a setting of priorities, a way of listening.

This is what I like to call the Love God Survival Kit. It is the way to live life fully now and prepare yourself for the hereafter. It is simple, yet it is incredibly hard. Love God first. Love God above everyone else and everything else. It is the only way to survive the jungle of your life. It is the only way to really live.

- The Very Rev. Kate Moorehead