According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, an average of 1.73 million passengers flew per day in 2010. In my own life, I fly several times a year. Whether it's flying back up to school, across the country for a family vacation or over the ocean for an epic adventure, I seem to never go too long without finding myself in the sky. It has always been one of my favorite methods of transportation and I have never been someone to be nervous about my safety while on board.
I have always thought that planes are truly amazing how they can take us to all the corners of the world. They carry us for thousands of miles as we glide smoothly above the clouds we are so used to looking up to. When I flew most recently, I couldn’t help but think how incredible it is that I get in a plane so often and trust pilots (whom I have never met) with my life. When I buckle my seat belt and get ready for the hours to come, I am practically putting my life into the hands of a person I trust to do their job to the best of their ability. This last trip I took, I thought… why do I find it easier to trust this unknown pilot more than I sometimes trust God?
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Might sound like a stretch, but hear me out. We are told God has a plan for each and every one us (Jeremiah 29:11), that everything along our paths is happening for a reason (Ecclesiastes 3:1-15). With God, we have this ultimate plan and purpose and He is leading us to exactly where we need to be. He is successfully taking us from point A to point B. If you’re anything like me, in the duration of your life, you have questioned this. You have questioned why certain things have happened or if you are where you should be. You have worried and stressed about the future and found it hard to trust your faith and "let go and let God" (Matthew 6:25-34).
I have found that learning to genuinely trust God with your whole life and everything in it is a lot like boarding a plane to get to your desired destination. Once you sit down and strap in, you aren’t going to have control of what the pilot does up front. You can’t always see what’s ahead or what obstacles are about to come. Sometimes you can’t even see what’s happening below you. You aren’t going to foresee every patch of turbulence or oncoming fit of rain.
Like some challenges we encounter, you might be flying through clouds for so long that you’re not sure you’re ever going to get out of them, and you feel uneasy about how long it has been since you last saw the sky. Did the pilot get lost? Do other planes know we are in here?
But, we continue to trust this pilot. We trust this man whose face we’ve never seen and whose voice we’ve only heard briefly through the muffled cracks that spoke throughout the plane when we first left solid ground. His job is to get us to the end of the flight completely unscathed and, thankfully, he continues to do so.
One of the challenges that come into play when learning to truly trust God and his plan for you is when we get scared (Psalm 56:3). He doesn’t want us to be afraid so it doesn’t make sense that something would happen to scare us. Our doubt comes into play and we think we are going to have to figure this out on our own (Proverbs 3:5-6). However, one of the first things we do when we hit turbulence is pray. I grip the armrests, tightly shut my eyes, and pray that this plane doesn’t come down when it isn’t supposed to. This has taught me that when I am afraid in my life, I should respond in the way I respond during turbulence- with prayer (Psalm 86:7).
I find it silly that I have doubts in trusting God's plan for me when I have no problem trusting a pilot that flies me thousands of feet above the ground in a plane that jerks around through patches of clouds for a couple minutes at a time. No matter the rough patches or the clouded windows, just like your pilot, God is going to get you exactly where you need to be.
