It was a gray and low overcast day.   Ceilings just above legal limits and a good day to fly with a friend shooting instrument approaches at a couple of airports.

We had just completed an approach and taken off again, entering into the low overcast when  <BANG>  the aircraft starts violently shaking…

Not knowing what was wrong, we did for certain know we were in trouble.  

A declaration of “Mayday” allowed us to deviate from our assigned heading and turn back toward the airport, seeking the sweet spot of visibility just below the clouds and just above the treetops.   After prayerfully looking for the airport, while nursing an airplane that seemed determined to hurt us, we saw the runway and landed without further incident, other than greeted by the airport firetrucks that dutifully rolled after our declaration. 

Once stopped, we discovered the cause…approximately six inches of one of the propeller blade tips was missing.  This had created blade imbalance in the propeller, the disparity magnified when spinning at 2500 revolutions per minute.    Usually such imbalance rips the engine out of its mounts and off the aircraft.  Should this occur, the absence of the weight of the engine moves the center of gravity of the airplane far aft, leaving the plane uncontrollable.

Now in a rented car for our return, my friend and I nervously chatted about the event. I was pleased to be able to tell him of my faith and trust in Christ, of my comfort and assurance that following my death, I would be forever with my Lord.

However, some time later, I began to struggle when thinking about the flight. Not that I was concerned about the next flight. In fact, I had already flown many times since. I was still concerned about THAT flight. Rethinking it. Rehearsing it. Re-fearing it. The fact that the motor should have left the airplane, left me unsettled. 

Sometimes it is hard to pinpoint exactly what moves us into right thinking. But there is nothing like sound theology to bring perspective to one’s soul.

General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson once penned:  “My religious beliefs teach me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time of my death. I do not concern myself with that, but to be always ready whenever it may overtake me.  That is the way all men should live, and all men would be equally brave.

_{National Parks Service photo}

Jackson’s religious beliefs were grounded in Scripture.     

David, the shepherd, military leader, then King of Israel had written:

Your eyes have seen my unformed substance;
And in Your book were all written
The days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them.
Psalm 139:16 (NASB95)

And Job of old before him declared:

“Who can make the clean out of the unclean?
No one!
“Since his days are determined,
The number of his months is with You;
And his limits You have set so that he cannot pass.
Job 14:4–5 (NASB95)

I began to meditate on and grasp the fact that because I did not die that day, in sovereignty, I could not have died that day. And that day, and its remembrance, became no different for me than other days. Other than I had quite a “There I Was” pilot story to tell.  To paraphrase Stonewall, I was as safe that day in the plane as if I had been in bed. And conversely, if that was the day the Lord had ordained for my death, there would have not been anything I could have done to make it not so.

So with Jackson, trusting God’s ordained timing, let us move through each day without fear, and together “…be equally brave.”

Rod
S.D.G – 18

_{*aircraft above trees photo by Sam Willis}