Jesus Is O Negative (O-)
An interesting title for the blog no doubt. I had an experience the other day here in Afghanistan that I wanted to share with you. We were in a province known as, Helmond Province. Helmond is still considered the Afghan “Wild West”, so we were all on high alert. Tensions were running high! We wanted to get in, let our guys do their thing, and then get’em out. Quick and easy, right! Well, we had inserted more than 150 troops on the ground. My group used three aircraft, and the other guys used two. We got everyone in without a hitch. So far so good! Now we wait for the call to come and get them. Then it happened. One of our aircraft broke hard. Thank God we got it down in a safe Forward Operating Base (FOB) and not out in the wild country. So at least the aircraft and our crew were safe, but it wasn’t going to be flown anytime soon. Aircraft do brake from time to time, even in a combat zone. The next turn of events was from the other guys who had used two aircraft. Well…... their priority had changed, and they were not going to be able to help us on the extraction (exfil). I will just say that this other group was not American. It was hard for us to swallow them not helping with the exfil, but it is what is.
Now, we have a lot of dudes to get out before dark, and the clock was ticking. It was shaping up to be multiple trips, and they still had not made the call for extraction. Not to mention that each trip back and forth would be at considerable increased risk. The idea is to drop them off, SURPRISE! And then hop back in to get them, never to be seen again. Going back two and three times is just asking the enemy to mount some kind of retaliation. The distance was great enough that on every turn we would need fuel, just adding to the daylight problem. Once our guys are on the ground doing their thing it can be tough for them to just turn it off, but the option of calling them and letting them know we were on our way early was looking better and better.
Luckily we got the call moments before we were going to be forced to go get them early. During this time I was part of the crew with the broke aircraft. So, I needed a ride also. As the aircraft were in bound to get the first load we learned that the ground commandos had fought quite a bit and were ready to leave. Knowing this just seemed to add to the tension. They certainly didn’t like the news that we only had two aircraft and multiple trips were required. But there is nothing they could do, but hold on until there turn arrived. The aircrews were calculating fuel down to the liter so as to put the max amount of troops on board and still make it back to the pump. Just another day at the office right!
During the first turn, unexpectedly, they yelled my name to hop on one of the aircraft and head out to get some guys and take them to the main staging area. Once there, I would replace one of the pilots. At that point the other pilot would have been flying nearly 8 hours. So, I hop in the back and am sitting amongst several Afghan Commandos, US Special Forces and others. Usually, an American crewmember would not take the floor, but time was of the essence, so I just squeezed in on the floor.
Sitting on the floor of the aircraft that day I began to Thank God. The sun was setting and all the people on board had made it home. I asked God to get us through this last little bit, all of us. As I looked out the back I saw a bearded Army Special Forces troop looking into the sunset. On his right shoulder there was a patch. It said, “A+”. I knew right away what this was. This is in case a troop gets shot up; the battlefield medic will know what type of blood to call for. Why keep this vital piece of info a secret right? Put that on your chest or shoulder so all will know. Most of the combat troops do it. I looked around the aircraft and saw that even the Afghans had these patches on…O+, A-, B+ etc….
This made me think of my blood type, O Negative (O-). O- is the type of blood referred to as the universal donor blood. O- can be received by any other blood type. The opposite is not true. Other blood types resist the wrong type of blood if it were to be given. Fatally even. You can’t just give anyone any old blood. At that moment the Lord blessed me with an awesome thought of Christ. That day, I had worked with the US civil and military, Afghans, Brits, and Dutch. So many different people, from so many different places. Each with vastly different cultures and traditions. Seemingly so different at times it seemed that the individual differences would just go misunderstood due to their complexities. Yet each of us has one commonality, Christ. Like the O- blood type, Christ is the only one that every person on the face of this planet can receive. All the faces I looked at that day, all the blood type patches, I couldn’t help but see Christ as the one commonality. If they only knew that Jesus Christ is O-…He can be received by all.
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