The first person to ride down Niagara Falls was Annie Edson Taylor, a sixty three year old schoolteacher who used a wooden barrel packed with inflated pillows, a mattress, and an anvil. When they fished her out she said: “No one ought ever do that again.” The most recent attempt was Robert Overacker on a jet ski. He died because his parachute, which opened as planned, wasn’t tied to his back. But even those who stared death in the face there and lived to tell the tale couldn’t cheat it forever. Bobby Leach for example, who rode the falls in a steel barrel, survived, only to die fifteen years later after slipping on an orange peel n New Zealand.
It reminds me that the Bible says: ‘Don’t boast about tomorrow, your life is as uncertain as the morning mist.’ That’s why we should plan as though we’ll live forever; but live as though we’ll die tomorrow.