Musings on a Flight

Sometime in the last year I found myself on board a plane, looking at the landscape below. In doing so, a very faint memory stirred within my soul, making me very uneasy. I was remembering an incident that occurred many years ago, when I was once again on board a plane, looking out at the landscape below…

Probably to the surprise of many, I used to be smart. Child bearing and creeping age have depleted me of those brain cells which are necessary for at least the impression of intelligence. I was certainly one of those people that peaked early and declined steadily thereafter. At age 15 I was taking flying lessons; at 16 I made my solo flight, at 17 I had my Pilot’s License. The joke in my family was that I could fly before I could drive; my parents had to chauffeur me to the plane I could fly by myself.

One of the requirements before actually obtaining a license is to do a certain number of cross-country trips, the definition of which merely means flying from one airport to another, landing, and returning to the home runway. I took off on one of these fun trips, flying from my home airport in western Massachusetts to one in the eastern part of the state. I landed, went through the routine of pre-flight inspection, hopped aboard, and took off again. Somewhere along the way, I looked carefully at the landscape below, and it was unfamiliar to me. The mountains and lakes that should have been there, according to my map, weren’t there. Perhaps I am misguided in my map-reading, I reasoned. So I checked again. And again. No mistake, I was lost. Panic gripped me and wouldn’t let go. “Where am I? What should I do? Where’s the nearest airport? How do I get down? Is this where my life will end?” In a moment, all the smug self-satisfaction in being a young girl able to fly a plane was gone. I was, without a doubt, in a personal crisis of epic proportions.

It was at this moment that I became spiritual. Having no known faith, I decided that this would be a good time to try one out. I was SO stereotypical in my request to this unknown deity. “God, if you are there, and if you get me down safely, then I will…”

Here is the crux of the matter: For the life of me, I cannot remember what my part of that vow entailed. I have no doubt what I asked God to do, and I have no doubt that He upheld his end of the bargain. The writing of this musing proves that He did indeed save me from disaster that day. But I am left with this realization: not only have I forgotten what I promised that day, I even suppressed the memory of that incident for years and years. How ungrateful was that?

Despite evidence thus far to the contrary, I did not set out to focus on “ME” in this article. As always, everything in life is really about God, including our failed memories and scary experiences. When I began to faintly remember this episode a few months ago, I also remembered Psalm 22, where Christ asks the Father for deliverance from death, and describes what He will give to the Father if this is accomplished – the praise of the nations. Astonishingly, WE are the payment of his vow; WE are the beneficiaries of this divine promise. Unlike a frightened girl lost in the air many years ago, neither God the Father nor God the Son forgot the details of THEIR arrangement. Oh where would we be if they did? In a crisis of epic proportions.