Flying Over San Angelo

Last week I went to San Angelo, Texas for a few days of hunting with some of the men from the church. The group I was hunting with departed for camp by vehicle early Thursday Morning. My son Hunter played his last High School Football game on Friday night. There was no way I was going to miss that game, so I joined the hunting part on Saturday. At 1:00 pm Saturday, I boarded an airplane and flew to Texas. Of course my trip wasn’t quite as long as their's was - they drove more than 20 hours while I got there in about 6 hours. My flight wasn’t all smooth and easy however. In fact, the last leg of the journey was a bit hairy. We were on a propeller driven commuter plane that was loud, small, and so light that it kept getting blown around by the wind. The turbulence was so rough that the pilot kept the “fasten seat belt” light on the entire time. At one point, I looked out the window just to see how far we would fall if the plane suddenly went into a nose dive. I shouldn’t have done that… “terra firma” was a long way off at 30,000 feet. As my imagination went wild, I flashed back to the short briefing we had at the beginning of the flight. The stewardess gave us a short talk about what to do in case of an emergency but I couldn’t remember exactly what she said. I’ve flown quite a lot over my life, and I’ve heard the same story probably hundreds of times. So now, I rarely pay much attention. It all goes in one ear and out the other. But now, when our plane was being knocked around the skies by the wind, I found myself racking my brain to try and remember what was said… Something about an oxygen mask dropping from somewhere, but was I supposed to plug in the tube somewhere? Then there was the thing about putting your head between your knees or some where… I’m not sure where… but it sounded like something I couldn’t do anyway… and what was that about the seat cushion? Oh yeah, that’s for floating… nothing but sand below us… And who was supposed to open the door beside me?
And I’m wondering… “Okay, if we go down, how long will it take before we hit the ground? Will we die instantly or lay around in the sun suffering for several hours before we bite the dust? I also wondered how many of the other folks on the plane might not be believers… I could have a captive audience for an evangelism sermon… Maybe someone would respond to this altar call!” But all I did was cinch down my seat belt and tried to focus on the Sudoku puzzle in the complementary issue of the Airlines Magazine. I felt totally unprepared… Even though I had sat thru that stinking talk so many times… I couldn’t remember much of it at all…
That got me to wondering. How many of us fly thru life… fly thru church… fly in circles where we hear the same messages over and over, telling us how to prepare for the crises of life, but instead of listening and following the instructions, we let it all go in one ear and out the other. Then turbulence comes along and our life goes into a full “tail spin”, so to speak, and before we know it, we’re heading for a crash. And not only are we unprepared for the crises of life, many times we’ve brought the whole situation upon ourselves because we haven’t heeded the instruction of God’s Word to take care of ourselves personally, spiritually or emotionally…
And as we realize that we’re going down, we’re scrambling around trying to remember what we’ve heard or read that will help us thru the crisis we’re facing.
Friend, if you’re flying thru life at the speed of a twin turbo prop plane, cruising at altitudes never meant to be inhabited by human beings, don’t wait until you’re about to crash and burn before you think about being heeding God’s Word. Read the instructions… Pay attention to the messages the Lord is sending you… He has your best interests at heart… Listen up and live; the truth is, sooner or later, you’re going to have some turbulence hit your life either physically, spiritually or otherwise… Are you prepared?

Posted in: Flying; preparedness; listening; crisis