And now we sit here in Tampa, a mile or so from a small airport and directly under another flight path. Every morning as we sit outside sipping our third cup of coffee as we have done for so many years, everything from single engine props to traffic helicopters to company jets fly over us in the same southwestern line, or return on the path in a northeastern line every ten minutes or so. We just can't seem to get away from flight paths.
Which is fitting, for our lives all travel the same flight path. Some may fly at higher or lower altitudes and some may experience more turbulence than others. The stops along our journey may be different, but the destination is the same for us all—death. But even physical death is not the final stop and for a believer that last stop is the point of it all. The rest of the world will do all they can to lengthen the first part of the flight or even deny the final landing, but plastic surgery, inedible health food, and lifelong gym memberships will not change reality. Death will come.
And that's when our flight paths veer off on a different line. How we lived along the first flight path will certainly make a difference, but trust in God's grace will land us right in the middle of those glorious promises of redemption and bliss, and in the arms of our Lord.
But some head toward another landing place, where their engines will sputter and stall over a tarmac cratered by sin, where they know they are crashing yet can do nothing about it, where the fire from that crash-landing will never cease, and there is no hope for a different ending.
And so the first part of our flight path determines Flight Paths Part 2. As long as you draw breath, it isn't too late to file a new flight plan.
For all our days pass away under your wrath; we bring our years to an end like a sigh. The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away (Ps 90:9-10).
Dene Ward