I love airplanes. Always have. I love to fly too. So much so, that I got a Private Pilot’s license in 1988. The freedom of flight, the process of planning a flight, the accumulation of understanding gained during a flight, and just watching things below go by are unlike anything else.
People have asked me if I ever get nervous or scared when I fly. Honestly, I do not. I’ve been in crazy weather, flown through severe turbulence, navigated narrow mountain passes, had near misses with other planes, but always felt confident and secure.
Except for one time when I was a passenger.
We were on our way to Israel. The old TWA L-1011 lumbered off the runway at JFK and began its climb eastbound over the North Atlantic. As the flight attendants begin to prepare the serving carts, we all began to settle in for the ten-hour flight. I was in heaven analyzing the various aspects of this enormous aircraft, until a loud bang caught my and everyone else’s attention. It wasn’t long after that noise that the pilot came on the intercom and said,
We have had a serious malfunction in the number one engine. We’ve declared an emergency and are returning to JFK. Flight attendants please prepare for emergency landing.
Within in minutes we were given instructions for the emergency landing procedures. As it began to occur to me how serious this was, I could feel anxiety building inside me, and I wasn’t the only one. I could hear people saying that they loved each other. I could hear people crying, in fact one even of the flight attendants was crying. I could hear people praying. It was getting tense…
…until I heard them singing.
There was a group of people from an African Methodist Episcopal church who all sitting together in the back of the plane. They began singing. I mean singing. Giving God praise. They sang,
I will bless the Lord, oh my soul,
And all that is within me, bless His holy name;
For He has done great things, hallelujah,
He has done great things, hallelujah,
He has done great things, bless His holy name.
Almost everyone aboard began singing with them. God is my witness, the entire plane was filled with a tangible sense of peace. Even when the pilot announced for us to prepare for landing, that peace remained.
As the plane wobbled its way down onto the runway, we could see dozens of ambulances and fire trucks lining both sides of the runway. The wheels touched down and it seemed we rolled forever because there was no reverse thrust. But finally that big old jumbo jet turned off the runway and began taxing to back to the gate.
Everyone onboard began to applaud. But those precious AME folks who had been singing, erupted in praise and thanks to the Lord Jesus. It wasn’t long that every Christian aboard that plane (and there were a lot of them on their way to Israel), were saying, “Amen! Amen!” I even heard the flight attendant who had been crying say, “Amen.”
We later found out that the plane had lost all its generators. They flew back and landed on battery power alone. But we also learned that the pilot’s could hear us singing. One of them commented, “I feel like we had some help from above.”
Yes indeed, we had help from above…and also from the back of the plane.
You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You. (Isaiah 26:3)
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