Today’s
Scripture Reading (June 3, 2019): Psalm
62
I have always been intrigued by the story of D. B. Cooper. D. B.
Cooper was an unknown person who hijacked a Boeing 727 plane on November 24,
1971. The unknown hijacker bought a ticket on the airline under the false name
of “Dan Cooper” and boarded a flight headed from Portland, Oregon to Seattle,
Washington. Once on the plane, he declared that he had a bomb and demanded that
when the plane landed in Seattle, that the aircraft be refueled and that he be
given four parachutes and $200,000 in small, untraceable bills. When the plane
took off again, five people remained onboard, the hijacker and four crew
members, along with the parachutes and the money, as the aircraft started a
trip to Reno, Nevada. The hijacker then told the four crew members to remain in
the cockpit for the rest of the flight. He then lowered the rear staircase
while the plane was still in the air. It is believed that at 8:13 p.m., a
little more than thirty minutes into the flight to Reno, the hijacker jumped
out of the plane with the ransom. And this is the last of what we know of D. B.
Cooper.
Since then several theories have been postulated, and several
suspects suggested, most of which have also been ruled out. Various experts on
the hijacking also have a suggest person who they think was the mysterious D.
B. Cooper, but nothing has been proven, and no theory has wholly fulfilled the
facts of which we are aware. At 8:13 p.m. on the evening of November 24, 1971,
Dan Cooper stepped out of a plane in the middle of a rainstorm over South-West
Washington State never to be seen again. Most believe that he died during his
attempted escape, but his body has never been found so even that cannot be
proven. No trace of Cooper, nor of any of the equipment that left the plane
with him, has ever been found. The strange case of D. B. Cooper is the only
unsolved case of air piracy in the history of air travel. It is like he fell
through a hole in space and disappeared from our realm between during the trip
he took from the Hijacked plane to the ground.
David warns us not to put our trust in goods that have been stolen
or gained through extortion. We might get richer, but the gain is really an
illusion. There is a vast difference between the things that we work to earn
and the benefits that we make through illegal or illicit means. By the way,
there is also a vast difference between gambling with your own money versus
being bankrolled with someone else money. The reality, which David seems to
understand, is that the riches we gain ‘the easy way,’ we also lose ‘the easy
way.’ Money that we work for makes us much more careful, because we know how
hard it is to replace.
The story of D. B. Cooper provides an excellent illustration of
David’s principle. He gained $200,000, but there was no foundation for the
gain. D. B. Cooper got away with the crime but likely lost much more by either
dying on the way to the ground or soon after in the wilderness due to
conditions that he could not control. Either way, he never got to spend any of
the money that he extorted. He had set his heart on something transient, like a
wisp of smoke. And he found out that, in the end, the smoke could not be
contained.
Tomorrow’s
Scripture Reading: Psalm 64
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