Leaving on a jet plane…
John Denver’s song title makes an apt title for this Journal entry too, probably my last one until mid-August when I return, also on a jet plane - an Emirates Airbus, the giant A380. But unlike the song lyrics, my bags are not yet packed, nor am I ready to go, and with a return ticket I actually do know when I’ll be back again… er, trusting all goes according to plan.
I know I have flown on many flights, and over great distances, but flying is really not something I look forward to overly much. However, when you live down the very bottom of the planet (”bottom” according to my Northern Hemisphere friends, that is!) then, if you want to go anywhere much, there are not too many options.
I’m told that the odds of myself coming to grief are far more likely on the roads, in a car accident back home, than in any aircraft incident. Statistics are supposed to be comforting here, but two airbuses have recently crashed and nobody on board survived the experience. Oh-oh, I really should not be thinking of that, should I? And they were not the giant A380.
One of the things about flying is that you give up control concerning your life, as you do when having a general anaesthetic, to others plus technology. Sitting in an aircraft 35,000 ft above the Pacific Ocean, I have relinquished control over my life to the people and computers that make sure the sophisticated winged metal tube enclosing me is doing what it is supposed to be doing, and the materials and workmanship relating to that metal tube and all its necessary parts likewise. I have to trust that all will be well, or I’d just not go.
When it comes to trust, I am aware that trust is not just a simple blanket operation that applies to everything for everything - or it should not be in a prudent intelligent being. For instance, I trust my dentist to repair my tooth, but not necessarily to lay a spanner on my car. Likewise, I don’t trust a mechanic to fix my tooth. I do trust both to cause some pain in my wallet, though!
For a Christian there is more to the story than just trusting people and technology. If you believe that God is the creator of all, and that He is Sovereign over His creation as well, then there is sure comfort in knowing that there are no “maverick molecules” - nothing that happens outside His Will for each of us. Everything to do with each of us remains in His hands, so to speak. That does not necessarily mean that any flight I take wont end in disaster, or that He has decreed it to happen if it does (as He has decreed His moral law) except in the sense that He has determined gravity exists, a pull exerted towards Earth’s centre, and that all kinds of unpalatable consequences do occur due to the fallen nature of this world. However, it does mean that He has it all under His control even though people and technology will fail and natural harm will come of that. The only grief that I come to will be what He has allowed to happen, He whose wisdom and love is far greater than I can ever humanly estimate. I cannot even begin to fathom what good things He has in store for me eternally. If I judge His wisdom and love by my own limited human wisdom, I am simply going to come unstuck. So will you too if you say “because this awful thing happened, God did not care” or “God is not in control after all”. You will be stuck in your own limited human perspective, seeing the horizon from the beach and saying there are no ships out there, rather than standing on top of the cliff behind you and seeing the shipping way out to sea.
Because I am human, I naturally want to have a safe trip. I have a son whom I’m leaving behind for the duration, and other family and friends. I pray for a safe journey, and for their safety back home. But I am aware that the unexpected can happen, that plans don’t always work out, that things can change in less than a blink of the eye. I pray and trust that God will keep us all safe from harm, but should harm happen anyway (because that is the nature of this fallen world) then I do know that it did not happen without God being there, but within His wise and loving purpose for us all. Disbelief will give you more pain than necessary, all that is not of faith being sin, and our tiny finite minds are simply not up to the task of judging the wisdom, love and mercy of God.
Dubai and London, here we come! God bless you all, readers of Judah’s Journal, and I plan to be back posting again later in August.
Evil prevails when good people do nothing.
