From the south-slightly-east-of-central part of the city where I'd been running errands, the sensible way home is the road that goes alongside the river, out almost to my town. The road skirts the city's airport--in fact, it goes right under the takeoff flight path, close to the end of the runway. Now and again, I get really lucky and manage to drive past just as a jet is taking off, thundering a few hundred feet overhead. As I came out on Friday afternoon, when the airport is particularly busy, I got lucky: one plane taking off almost overhead, and other planes circling waiting to land. Wooo!

I love airplanes--not to fly on; that's a different matter, a matter of boredom and stale air and cramped seats; but to watch. Airplanes make me smile like a little kid. I turn off the car radio to hear them thunder, and I follow them as much as I can without crashing the car. I don't know a thing about airplane lore; I can't tell a 767 from a DC whatever. I just love watching the damn things fly, especially when they're taking off or landing. It's the optimism of them that grabs.

Yes, of course I understand the physics of flight, the "hows" and "whys". They're very simple, very straightforward, all these vectors of thrust and drag and lift; properly explained, any sensible 10-year-old can grasp them. But at a real deep-down level, I don't care. The fact remains that anything that weighs 300,000 pounds or so ought to fall right down out of the sky like a rock. That's just obvious common sense, isn't it? Flight, to my mind, is a miracle.

It's also obvious common sense, isn't it, that even if you believe in God, life will go on in the future the way it has in the past, that belief can't actually change anything. If we try again what we tried before and failed at, we're just going to fail again. Death and taxes, that's for sure, and Murphy's Laws still hold, and you can't change human nature. There are no miracles, or nothing you can't explain as a sort of magic trick. Nothing that weighs even 3 pounds can stay up in the sky; how can something that weighs as much as an airplane? Nahhhh.... no way.

But in fact, airplanes don't fall out of the sky. They get up there, and that stay up there, and they come down neatly and nicely thousands of times for every one that screws up. Very, very rarely do they fall from the sky, and then only if something has gone horribly wrong..

The secret is movement and orientation. Airplanes stay up because they thrust forward at a speed that keeps a flow of air pressing upward on the underside of their wings. Same goes for us. When we're moving forward at an appropriate speed (a 767 doesn't fly as fast as Concorde!), we have that life under us that can keep us steady when there seems to be nothing under us but air. It's getting stuck in place--usually because we're too afraid to let go of the ground and take off--that leaves us floundering, rolling, and crashing,

Anyone who's flown a kite (another occupation I have been partial to) knows that the crucial thing is to keep the kite's nose up so the air presses up on its underside. Same goes for us. When we keep our noses pointed in the right direction--not keeping them resolutely stuck in our own navels, not looking down them at other "inferior" people (a besetting sin of Christians in all places and times!), not sniffing out other people's sins to reinforce our own unimpeachable Moral Superiority--then we feel that Wind that can raise us higher and higher and keep us steady, still tethered to this world, but soaring..

Face forward; move even when you don't feel solid ground under your feet; keep your nose pointed straight toward the Light, while staying tethered in this world (for even airplanes have to land!) Have faith that you won't fall from the sky like a stone, that God's breath will be under you, pressing you upward, holding you in its power. Do that, and you can feel it under your wings, that Wind of God, the Spirit at active work in this world, lifting you high, keeping you safe and steady on your way.

(With thanks to Andrew Graham)