Travels

I am not a big fan of airplanes. I have been on two trips in my life which have required that I fly to get there, in both cases, something has gone wrong. The first trip I took was to Texas and at first, everything seemed to be going well. I found a seat (a window seat, in fact), I had some peanuts and some Pepsi and I was starting to think that my first airplane ride was going to go off without a hitch. That was until it came time to land...talk about rough landing. The whole time we were coming in for landing, the plane was swaying back and forth and then one back landing gear touched down (now I’m pretty sure that if just one landing gear hit the runway, then we were landing crooked) and then we went back up, and then we touched down again. This being my first flight, the whole time I had visions of a wing scraping the ground and ripping off the airplane. Being in a window seat did not help this image. From what I've seen of landings on TV and movies both back landing gears are supposed to hit the runway first and then the nose of the plane will slowly touch down. On this plane, I think the nose gear touched down before the back right landing gear, making a very rough and scary landing. Needless to say, I was glad to get off of that plane.

My second trip, to Oregon, had an excellent landing, but the takeoff wasn't so smooth. We were headed down the runway for takeoff, picking up speed when all of a sudden the plane slows down and pulls off to the side of the runway. The pilot comes on the intercom explaining that some warning lights had turned on in the cockpit and he was going to have the plane checked by some mechanics. About 15 minutes went by and the pilot came over the intercom once again to say, "we found the problem, we're going to take off now." He did NOT say that the problem had been fixed and everything was going to be fine. All he said was that the problem had been found and we would be taking off. This did not reassure me. Luckily, the flight went well.

Airplanes give me an uneasy feeling because I am not in control of the things that can happen on them.

I like to drive. I would not like it if YOU drove. I've been in a car barreling 100mph down the freeway while I was not in the driver's seat...I can think of better, less catastrophic times I've had. I do not like it when others drive me anywhere for the same reason I do not like to fly in airplanes...I am not in control of the situation. There is no one I trust more than myself. I feel much safer knowing that I have a handle on the things that can affect me in life. There is a certain comfort that comes from having things under control.

Is this what God wants of me? Does He want me to have everything in my life under my control? Perhaps even more importantly...have I left room in my controlled environment for God to work? If I could do it all by myself, and have everything go smoothly, would I need a savior? For some reason, no matter how hard I try, even when I am in control of things, everything does not go the way I planned it. Things I plan with good intention somehow turn out wrong, and I must realize that I need a savior. A savior who will come in and take control for me, who will drive my cars, and fly my airplanes in life, better than I ever could. Jesus is the savior who does this, but what I have to do is to make room for him to work. I have to get over my control freak syndrome and let him start driving.

When It Rains, It Pours

The rain started last Thursday, which is somewhat disappointing for me because boasting a new set of frisbee golf frisbees, I was hoping to get out on the course and give them a whirl. It continued on Friday and Saturday (which changed my New Year's Eve plans) and Sunday and even Monday before the skies cleared. Someone mentioned to me that the amount of rain that had fallen in those consecutive days had not been matched for some fifty years in Visalia. Which is kind of fitting, seeing as how that was the last time that Visalia had been flooded, and turning on the news on Monday I was surprised to see that Visalia was once again flooding. Not only was it flooding, but it was flooding just a mile or two north of my house! I resisted the urge to go see the damage for myself and just let the news crews be my pair of eyes for the timebeing. Apparently, with all the construction going on just north of my house, there were lots of new houses, but there were not very many storm drains installed just yet. The result? Lots of brand new houses filled with two or three feet of water. After the fiasco was over with, many in my church congregation were attempting to find out if any of the other member's houses were involved in the flood, and the response from those members who lived in the area always seemed to be something to the effect of, "God was good to us, our house was spared." While I am certainly glad that their houses weren't flooded and that they seemed to be praising God for that, I couldn't help but think...what about all the people whose houses were flooded...was God not good to them? When they prayed to God that their houses would be saved from flooding, did God overlook them? Certainly God hadn't picked out some houses to be flooded and the other ones to be spared. What exactly had been God's action/intervention amidst the flooding?

In a hospital room are two patients, both are religious and both also have cancer. They both pray to God that He would intervene and heal, but only one of them recovers from the cancer...what was God's action in both of those patients' lives? Was He good to one and ignored the other?

If you pray that God will open up a parking spot at the front of the mall so that you do not have to walk so far and you find one just where you wanted it, did God answer that prayer?

Certainly, most of us would say that God does not grant us front row parking (it seems a bit absurd), but to what extent does God intervene in this world of ours? We know that He is the sustainer of life, if He did not will that life on earth go on, it certainly would not. So God is active today in the aspect of sustaining life, but does He answer personal prayer? James 5:16 says that "the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective," and Proverbs 15:29 says that God is "far from the wicked but He hears the prayer of the righteous." Apparently, there is something about the righteous that God likes to listen to them. Being righteous means not being self centered. Not having the things of self in mind, but the things of God. Being in tune with God. A righteous person would not pray for a parking spot, and perhaps a righteous person would not pray for a certain person to heal if they knew that the will of God was that that person's service to God on earth was finished (he would still pray for the patient, just not his healing). As for flooding houses and God's goodness...God is the one who defines goodness, any action of his is good, even an apparent inaction (in our eyes) would be good if God is the definition of good. If some of the people whose houses flooded were praying that their house would be spared and it wasn't, it was not a breach of God's goodness, but perhaps they have not seen God's good will in all of this just yet. Sometimes even the righteous can be wrong about God's plans...just ask Job.