Fasten Your Seat Belts!

Ed McClanahan

During my return flight from a recent vacation, the pilot came over the loudspeaker with these words: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to experience some turbulence. It is urgent that you be seated immediately and fasten your seat belts low and tight. If you happen to be holding an infant, please hold them as firmly as reasonably possible. Flight attendants be seated immediately!”

This is not the best news to get at any time, but it’s perhaps even a little bit more nerve wracking when you’re flying over the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It’s not like you can just land somewhere and wait out the storm. The pilot was not joking either. We bounced around hard for about fifteen minutes. It seemed as though the pilot was struggling to not only maintain stability from side to side, but front to rear as well. 

Turbulence is going to come into our lives again and again. It might not be the shaking of a jet airplane, but it might come in the form of a medical diagnosis, job loss, heartache over a failed relationship, or any number of other problems that put a challenge in front of us. We have a choice how we react to this turbulence. We can choose to complain, worry, or fight. Or we can ensure that we’re planted firmly on the rock as the Lord describes himself in Luke 6: 47-49: “As for everyone who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice, I will show you what they are like. They are like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete.”

Your next bout of turbulence is coming! Get your foundation secure by planting it on the rock that is Jesus Christ. He’ll keep your seat belted until you can land.