Flying Lessons #27

I remember my first plane flight. I was in high school and I flew from John Wayne Airport to San Jose to visit my friend Gaylynn Terry. We had been friends since we were little and had kept our friendship intact even though she had moved to Fountain Valley and then Walnut Creek while I had moved from Calabasas to Huntington Beach.  I do not remember  many details of the flighmuct other than it was short and that I had new luggage, which did not have wheels and was heavy by today’s standards. Air travel was not the main way people got from point A to B back in the day. It was expensive. People didn’t travel to far off places much at all unless they were wealthy. My first trip was so exciting and I saved awhile to be able to have the experience. And yet the flight was not the point. The vacation to visit a friend was! I do remember more about the visit and the activities than the hour long ride on a chair in the sky!

That is the thing about flights. we usually ask about how the flight was but we do not expect to hear a few generalized words about it. Jamie shared a devotion this week and shared that the thing about a flight is that it is just the means to the end. It is the way we are getting to where we are going. CS Lewis talked about death in this way. He said,

“If we really believe what we say we believe- if we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a “wandering to find home”, why should we not look forward to the arrival. There are, aren’t there, only three things we can do about death: to desire it, to fear it, or to ignore it. The third alternative, which is the one the modern world calls “healthy” is surely the most uneasy and precarious of all.”

Lewis had a lot to say about endings, and what comes after the end. He learned how to face death with courage. He saw it as ultimate transformation so eagerness and desire comes through as perfectly natural. I think of Reepicheep and his embrace of death with joy. And yet he also leaves plenty of space for grief and sorrow. Lewis knew sorrow and believed that somewhere deeper than his own grief that in the Lord’s presence all would be set right, every sorrow counterbalanced with joy, every grief resolved in reunion.So as I think about the journey, the flight to the real destination,  I consider Lewis’ thoughts about the end and beginning of everything and I am reminded to be gentle with others along the way. Death is the way, the flight, to the place we are going. Phil. 1:21 reminds us that while we look forward we are to live fully in the present and for the good of others!