A true story of worldly trust, and how it relates to trusting God.

Not many people among my acquaintances today are aware that I once was an aircraft pilot. In fact, I was a flight instructor at one of smaller airports in the Minneapolis Minnesota area, in northern Minnesota, United states.
For a while, years ago, this was my “classroom”

I really enjoyed helping people learn how to fly. I remember how. when I got my pilot licence and would take off and climb to, perhaps 3 thousand feet above the ground, I would look at the ground and marvel at how peaceful everything looked.
I’ll skip the details not relevant to this article and get to the point.
I really loved flying, so I decided to become an instructor in order to teach others how to fly. As I mentioned, the airplane above was my classroom.
In addition to the aircraft image above, my employer also owned an aircraft similar to the one pictured below.
That airplane could carry 4 people, and was well equipped with instruments for instrument flying. I’ll get to that shortly.

There was a day, mid-summer, when Joanne and I invited a couple we knew to come with us on an outing to northeastern Minnesota. The distance was over two hundred miles. I had arranged for us to meet my parents at an airport in northeastern Minnesota. We had dinner with my parents, then returned to the airport. We hugged each other, said “goodbye”, got into the airplane, and took off. The time was getting on into the evening. The air was calm, and there was a “haze” above. The moon was not in sight at that time. As we flew south toward our destination, the sun began to set below the horizon. Our flight course took us over an uninhabited area. There were no lights from vehicles or building. Soon, the sun was below the horizon. There was a moment when I could see – nothing outside of the windows. Pitch black!!
But: no worries, because I also have an instrument rating, meaning that I was qualified to fly under such conditions.
The image below shows the instrument panel in the airplane

As you can see, there are 2 rows of instruments. In the top row, the instrument in the center is called an “artificial horizon”. Without going into detail, it helps the pilot keep the airplane level.
If I was a flight instructor again, and you were my student, once we took off and were in the air, we would climb to an appropriate altitude. Then I would show you how to keep the airplane level. It’s easy: just look out of the windows on each side, and make sure that the wing tip on each side of the plane was the same distance below the horizon. In a very short time, you would be able to keep the plane level.
Of course, this presumes that we were doing this on a day when there was no turbulent weather. It also presumes that we were flying during mid-day hours, when we could see the tips of the wings and the horizon on each side of the plane.

Let’s pivot now from airplanes to our lives.

As I’m sure you know, life comes with turbulence and darkness! Where (or should I say Whom) do you turn to for guidance? In my story above, I relied on a man-made instrument to keep the airplane level and on course.

Here’s the God connection:

In a similar way, should we not be placing our trust in almighty God to get us through the turbulent and dark times in our lives?

- Jan