More to it Than Just Getting off the Ground!

            A couple of weeks ago, I returned from a week at the beach and a wonderful vacation.  Since we were very near Kitty Hawk, N.C., I decided to pick up a biography of Wilbur and Orville Wright that I have wanted to read for years entitled “The Bishop’s Boys”. 

            It is a great beach read about these two bicycle mechanics, raised by a pastor turned Bishop.  In a fascinating way, it described how the Wright brothers succeeded in inventing the airplane and subsequently changing the world, when so many others had failed.

            They were modest, not given to publicity, and were not flamboyant.  They had little outside assistance in their work.  They had no sponsors and no formal engineering education.  They were, however, curious, persistent, and pragmatic mechanics.  In a nutshell, all these qualities enabled them to stick it out through the hardships when others gave up.

            But there is an even more interesting reason for their success.  Several people were working on flying machines at the same time or soon after.  Some of them were generally successful in getting an airplane to fly.  That seemed the ultimate issue of the day:  getting the craft off the ground.

            The genius of the Wright brothers is that they would not stop there.  They uniquely figured out the challenges of airborne control and forces, and designed a system that would work in the air.  In a nutshell, several folks figured out how to lift an airplane into the sky.  The Wright brothers succeeded in not only getting it in the air, but controlling it once there.  As a result, they literally survived when so many others crashed.

            There is a profound spiritual lesson here.  Faith is not just about getting airborne.  Lots of people have spiritual experiences and exciting seasons.  They are certainly wonderful and we celebrate them when they come. All of us need to spiritually get off the ground!

            But faith is also for the long term.  Our belief needs to carry us to people and places.  We need to be able to adjust for wind and currents and land safely. 

            Sometimes, we modern people find ourselves impatient with all the schedules and structures that accompany our Christian practice.  We would simply like to get away by ourselves, have a personal experience with God that lifts us and offers us that thrill of spiritual flight.  Perhaps we could use a reminder that as important as that is, there is more to the faith.

            This week we are concluding our summer series with Paul and Acts and the closing verses seem frustrating.  After twenty eight chapters of buildup, Paul finally gets to his destination, Rome.  But then, he just does what he has always done.  Here we are at the climax of the book, and Paul is just preaching and teaching, spending time talking to folks while imprisoned in his home and the book ends.  Relatively speaking, it is strangely normal and a pattern we have seen many times before.

            But in the normalcy, there is a message.  The world is not changed nor converted to Christ simply by spiritual fireworks, as nice as those are.  The work of the church is not just about getting people in the air.  There are also important issues of control, navigation, and training.  The basics of the faith like worship, giving, studying, prayer, are all a critical routine that give us the ability to travel and not just fly. 

            Come join us in worship this weekend.  We will speak more about our call to change the world, but we will be reminded that to do it, we have to do more than just get in the air.  See you there!

Pastor Pete