For some reason I have never really had a fear of flying—in a plane of course. I remember being more enamored and fascinated during my first flight than I was frightful that before I got off of that giant air capsule it would have plunged to the earth below. However, I do realize that I don’t share the same feelings as many when it comes to climbing aboard a flying piece of metal that I have no control over. As a matter of fact, I know quite a few people that are perfectly fine with only visiting foreign countries in North and South America as you can navigate 100% on the ground rather than air. Why is this? Why the need for such a deathly fear of flying?
Quite simply, it’s due to a fragmented view of reality. Over time we have developed within our own cognizance an idea that being on the ground is far safer than being in the air. We take the stories of AA Flight 11, Flight 93, or Oceanic Flight 815, and we glorify the results of their crashes and we thrust that on the flight industry and come to our own conclusions about which mode of transportation is safer for us and our families. So why do we do this? I mean, it seems completely natural to do it, and yet it seems as though it is cast into a negative light.
Although this can be broken down and discussed for lengthy periods of time, I think at the core of it all is our inability to see the immense amount of grace that is showered over us every day. Our natural tendency is to exalt the things that are detestable to us and suppress the grace that can be found all over our lives. The sun, the rain, A/C, lights bulbs; these are bits and pieces of God’s grace to us. To finish the illustration above, thousands of flights every day make it safely to ground. Yet those stories never make it to the news. And we are always unimpressed that they make it to the ground.
Trusting in the Word of God, and believing that God is faithful to sustain and is faithful to provide is directly determined by our perception of his grace in our lives. You see, when you view the world around you like many view the idea of flying, you’ll always fail to see the tremendous amount of grace that God lavishes on undeserving people. He is faithful. He is worthy of our trust. He is sovereign. He is providential. His will is the ultimate one and it will be fulfilled. The lyrics of ‘Come Thou Fount’ I think sum up our problem:
“Prone to wander, Lord I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love”
Our proneness to wander and to leave the God that we love is what leads us to trust in our own strength and to find hope in what we can offer ourselves. Just as you have no control of the flight that you fly in, so your life is in the hands of the Almighty Sovereign. Will you spend your life in fear, failing to see the grace around you or do you trust Him?
About B Sue
