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February to mid-March 2009
from our Curate . . .
Thank God, an airplane in a river
When I was at my previous church, I had the privilege of getting to know a wonderful Christian lady called Sally. Sally was the embodiment of Christian joy, encouragement, faith and hope. You know the sort of person; someone who seems to care about everyone, someone who is simply the sunshine in the room. Once you’d met her, you started to understand the meaning behind the phrase “heaven on earth”.
Well sadly, Sally died a couple of years ago, but I was reminded of one of the lovely gifts of faith that she left behind. I remember her looking up into the sky when an airplane went overhead and saying “you know when I see that, I’m thankful God exists!”
For me, I only wish I had a grain of faith like that. Yet I was reminded once again of Sally when I woke this morning to see pictures of an Airbus 320 floating in the Hudson River in New York and hearing that everyone had escaped alive. I gave thanks to God. You may be reading this a few weeks on from the actual incident but I encourage you once again to give thanks. Give thanks for the lives of all those people who came through that ordeal alive and give thanks for the skill and bravery of the crew and especially the pilot who landed the plane so skilfully on the water.
So what is faith and trust? Do we really need it anymore in such an advanced world? If, like me, you have heard some of the recent discussions on the television and radio celebrating the anniversary of Darwin’s theory of evolution, you might conclude that faith is simply the suspension of thought; the last outpost of a bygone age inhabited by the religious extremists, the superstitious and the unenlightened. Instead, it is only wise atheists and secularists who seem to have the answer because they have discovered that we no longer need faith and trust; we only need only science and modernity.
But isn’t this a rather sad and uninspiring picture of the world? A world without faith and trust? I prefer Sally’s wonder at the things she did not understand and yet faithfully trusted because I believe that is much more like real life. I trust that when I walk into a building, the architects have used all of their skill to ensure it doesn’t collapse. I trust that the doctors and nurses and dentists and care workers and clergy and teachers and police have my best interests at heart. I trust that when I get on a plane or a boat or into my car, that it will get me to the end of my journey.
But even when life doesn’t go the way I expect, I am truly encouraged when I know that I can place my faith in the skills and abilities of other people like the pilot of that plane trusting that they will care for us to the extremes of their skills and abilities. Perhaps that’s when we give thanks; to God.
There is a lovely poetic phrase in the 54th Psalm that describes this sort of faithful trust in God and it goes like this “O Most High, when I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I am not afraid;”
Faith and trust are a part of all our lives and ultimately for me, so is faith in God. I am amazed when I meet people like Sally who, through faith in God, learn to love and care for people so much that they actually transform peoples lives for the better. So I pray that you too, when you look up into the sky and see an airplane, will remember the importance of faith and trust for all the people on board and give thanks to God for their care and safety.
Martin |
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St Mary’s Parish Church Marshalswick, St Albans |