To read today’s portion of scripture, you can purchase The One Year Bible 
Numbers 2:1-3:51
Mark 11:27-12:17
Psalm 47:1-9
Proverbs 10:24-25
Thirty years ago this week, I went with my husband, his parents and his siblings to Monroe, Louisiana to visit his sister, Cath. I felt excited to be in Monroe; I just wasn’t excited to travel there. Because getting there meant two connecting flights, and returning home meant traveling alone, without Dave, since I had to be back in my 1st grade classroom before the rest of the family came home.
I wasn’t a good traveler in those days. Everything about flying seemed illogical and just plain wrong. I knew about Bernoulli’s principle and how that was supposed to keep the wings of the airplane happily thrusting forward with nothing but air to sustain it, but reading about it is vastly different than depending on it.
Dave made the “there” trip survivable. He took my hand when the airplane started up, leaned in close to my ear, and prayed with me during take-off. I have so much confidence in Dave that I’m pretty sure, if the plane experienced some sort of major collapse in mid-air, that he’d fashion his jacket into a parachute and carry me to a soft landing.
But then … after a delightful week of sampling Shrimp Étouffée and Jambalaya, marveling over the Spanish moss hanging off all the trees, and laughing over the “rice and beans” option at KFC, I had to wave a sad good-bye to Dave at the airport and make a fearful, solitary walk to into the airport.
Do you know what never helps calm you down when flying? The memory of watching heartbreaking news footage of the Lockerbie, Scotland air disaster two months before your fight, and the equally sad footage of the United Airlines Flight 811 cargo failure (and ensuing deaths) just one week before you board your plane. I couldn’t stop thinking about all those people and what they had gone through. And it didn’t help that a lightning storm was blazing across the sky over the airport as I boarded.
So I sat down in my seat with no husband to hold my hand, and had to pray alone. And then, in an attempt to distract myself, I pulled my little travel Bible out of my carry-on and opened it randomly. It feel open at Psalm 46, and I read,
God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.
The words were so beautiful, I had to read them again.
God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.
And then I read them again. And after perhaps the seventh reading of that beautiful passage, I thought, My God created the very air upon which this airplane is resting.
And that was the end of my fear. Really and truly. Which is a good thing, because some years later, after I wrote my first book, God began opening doors for me to come and share my love for Him, and I began flying a bunch. Some months, I took three weekend flights to various women’s conferences and retreats. Several of those flights were to France. If God hadn’t soothed my anxious heart with those three lines of Scripture all those years ago, I would have stayed home.
And I would have missed a world full of lovely things.
If you liked this post, please share!
