Fear of Flying

As some of you know, I was traveling last week.  I had some church meetings in Mitchell and also was able to see some family.  But then, I had to make a trip to Columbus, Ohio, by airplane, something I haven’t done for about seven years.

I hadn’t missed it.  I don’t like flying much.  It’s not just the hassles that always come as part of flying, although that’s part of it.  I just really don’t like to fly.  I get nervous about it.  You can give me all the statistics you want to about how safe flying is and how you’re actually more at risk driving or doing a lot of other things.  I know all that, and I believe it.  But it doesn’t help when it comes time to get on the plane. 

So, I was rather nervous about the whole thing.  I prayed about it, but I was still nervous.  I was nervous for days in advance.  And yet, when the time came to actually do it, nothing could have been easier.  There were no delays.  There was no particular turbulence.  The planes left when they were supposed to and landed when they were supposed to.  Everything came off completely without incident.   

I was happy about that, obviously.  But I also felt a little foolish.  Here I’d done all that worrying, and it had all been for nothing.  My worrying had been a complete waste of time.

That’s how things often go in life, isn’t it?  We face a situation that makes us uncomfortable.  It scares us.  We think of all the things that could possibly go wrong.  We spend days, sometimes weeks, sometimes months or even years, worrying about it.  But then, the time comes to actually do it, and a lot of times everything works out just fine.  And we’re happy, but we also feel a little foolish for wasting all that time worrying.

Why do we do that?  Well, there are lots of reasons, but I think one of them is that we don’t trust God enough.  We say we do, but a lot of times we don’t.

Now, understand, I’m not saying that if we just trust God everything will work out the way we want it to.  There are all kinds of times in our lives when things don’t work out the way we want them to.  You’ve had that happen and so have I.  That’s not what I mean here.

You see, trust in God does not mean trusting that everything will work out the way we want it to.  Trusting God means being okay with whatever happens.  Trusting God means we believe that, no matter what happens, God is still in ultimate control.  Trusting God means accepting both the good and the bad.  Trusting God means trusting that God has plans and purposes that are far beyond our human understanding.  Trusting God means not demanding that God justify to us the things God does.  Trusting God means trusting that, no matter what happens, God is still there, God still loves us, and God will help us through.

If I’d had that kind of trust, I wouldn’t have wasted so much time worrying about my plane trip.  If we all had that kind of trust, we all wouldn’t waste so much time worrying about things.  So, whatever you may be facing, my prayer is that you’ll trust God, and that through that trust, you’ll be able to let go of whatever worries you may have.  That’s my prayer for myself, too.