“What were we thinking? Who in their right mind would strap themselves into a little aluminum tube to defy gravity and fly thirty thousand feet above the ground?!”
“Why did the pilot fly us into this mess? Can’t we land someplace else besides Atlanta? Staying alive is a lot more important than staying on schedule, for Pete’s sake!”
“This feels like a roller coaster, and I hate roller coasters. I’ve managed to avoid roller coasters for the past 48 years, and now look what I’ve gotten myself into.”
“How come that flight attendant looks so calm? How can he be calm when we’re about to get shaken out of the sky?”
“California wasn’t so bad. Why didn’t we just stay there?”
These were some of the thoughts pinballing around in my brain during a very bumpy flight as we returned from visiting our son and his family in California.
Let it be known that seeing those people I love so much might possibly be the only reason I’d get on a plane to fly across the country. I really do not enjoy flying. (Can you tell?)
It’s not that I’m afraid of being dead, since I firmly believe my physical death will simply launch me into an infinitely more wonderful life in heaven with God. No, I’m not afraid of “being dead”—it’s the “getting dead” part that makes me nervous.
Oh, me of little faith. My flying fears reveal an obvious, disturbing gap between what I think and say I believe and what’s truly in my heart.
Jesus could nap through a hellacious, life-threatening storm on a little fishing boat in the Sea of Galilee, and I freak out when an airplane trip gets a wee bit bumpy.
There’s little doubt I would’ve been one of those disciples on the boat with Jesus who frantically woke Him up screaming, “Don’t you care that we’re perishing?”
I’ve often said God doesn’t give us grace to worry about what might happen—He gives us grace to deal with what actually does happen. Like the manna God provided for the children of Israel in the wilderness, grace comes to us as we need it, one day or one moment at a time.
I believe that means when it’s my time to check out of this world, God will supply supernatural “dying grace” to carry me through that.
When our flight from California got crazy bumpy, I was not experiencing dying grace, which, I suppose, should have been oddly comforting.
Theoretically speaking, not being worried at all would have been more worrisome, since that might have indicated God was giving me airplane crash grace I didn’t want to need.
No, I was definitely not feeling any kind of supernatural serenity in those moments. I’m not sure I was actually experiencing true panic, since the definition of panic is “a sudden, overwhelming fear, with or without cause, that produces hysterical or irrational behavior.”
But I was surely close.
My insides were going certifiably nuts, even though I didn’t actually get outwardly hysterical or do anything irrational.
Not wanting to spend the rest of my days imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, I resisted the urge to stand up and shout, “Hey! Land this thing at the closest airport—NOW!”
Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
I guess it’s good to occasionally find ourselves in situations that shake up our hearts so we can see what comes bubbling out. Not comfortable, but good.
Turbulence in our lives is unavoidable and necessary if we truly want to grow in the truth, grace and faith God desires for us
So, what came out of your heart the last time you were shaken up?