Can you fly that plane??
Who is really in control?
As I sat down on the plane for the first time in several years, I realized that I had a choice to make.
In October of 2019, our daughter and her husband Zac moved to Maine for Zac to pastor a church in South Portland. Needless to say, they took our two grandsons with them. Oh no!! Since we live in Alabama, the only practical way to visit them is for us to fly. I haven’t flown much in recent years, and was never all that comfortable on airplanes anyway. However, the idea of seeing our daughter and grandchildren was a huge motivator. As I sat down on the plane for the first time in a long time, I realized that I had a choice to make – a choice that we all have to make many times – to be controlled by fear or not, to decide who is really in control. I could sit there with fists clinched enduring the flight while having pictures in my mind of the plane spiraling in a free fall from 35,000 feet and ending up in a huge ball of fire at the bottom. (I’m sure some of you have had those same thoughts. Lol!) Or, I could choose to look at the reality of the situation.
I started to feel the peace of god
I had to make a conscious choice to choose what I would think about. So I began comforting myself with the fact that flying is safer than driving. I reminded myself of the reality that the pilot, co-pilot, and flight attendants were just experiencing another day at work. Consequently, they were all completely at ease with the situation. As I looked out the window at the beautiful view, I started to feel the peace of God. I slowly accepted the fact that He is the One who is always in control of my situation, and I never am. I realized that trying to be in control – or thinking we are in control – is a major contributor to having no peace.
Are we really in control?
It’s funny how easily we can lie to ourselves about having some real control over the situations that we are in. Some of us feel more in control driving a car because we have the steering wheel in our hands and the gas and brake controls under our feet. We don’t consider all the other cars speeding down the road that we have no control over at all. Any one of them could at any time leave their lane and change our lives forever, or destroy it all together.
I realized that for me to experience peace on that airplane, I had to trust that the pilot and co-pilot knew what they were doing and I didn’t. I understand nothing about the laws of aerodynamics. (Maybe if I did, I wouldn’t be so quick to think that the plane could just fall out of the sky. Lol!) For me to try to enter the cockpit and instruct the pilot on how to fly that plane would be ludicrous and disastrous. When on a plane, we have absolutely no control over where that plane goes, how long it takes to get there, or what obstacles we might encounter on the way. Once that door is closed, we have to trust every decision to the pilot. We all have the faith necessary to do that, or we wouldn’t fly.
Sit back and relax!
How is it that we can trust that pilot with a few hours of our lives while locked on that plane, but struggle to trust God with our few years on this earth while our souls are locked in this mortal body? When it comes to trusting the Creator of the universe with that kind of control in our everyday lives, we seem to hit a huge stumbling block. What could ever make us think that He doesn’t have everything under control??
Accepting that we have no control, and believing that He is always in complete control, will bring peace in the midst of any storm. In Philippians 4:6-7, the apostle Paul instructs us, “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (ESV) Willingness to accept that God is the one who is in control and you are not is one more step down “The Blessing Road”. Stop trying to control things that you cannot understand and cannot control. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight. Trust that the “pilot” who is in control of your life has everything completely under control. He does!