As we boarded the plan on an eight hour flight to Europe, I looked at the other people who were settling into their (almost) comfortable seats. They were breaking out travel pillows and nonchalantly putting noise cancelling head phones on. Few seemed to be dealing with much anxiety, although truth to tell, humans are pretty good at hiding these sorts of nervous feelings from those around them.
Elaine had downloaded an app before we left called "Am I Going Down?" It purported to tell you the chance that your plane would crash on the way to its destination. Taking a Boeing 767 from Dulles to Vienna gave a chance of 1 in 3,912,617 of crashing, as per this amazing app. In other words, you could take that flight every days for 10,719 years without going down.
I suppose that this sort of an app is supposed to reassure the folks using it, although I wonder if anyone who is truly afraid of flying would actually be calmed by this odd, little program. For anyone like me, flying still seems a pretty unnatural activity, regardless of what a computer program might say.
Sometimes when something always happens according to plan it becomes routine and we cease to appreciate the amazing nature of it. At the same time, people of a hundred years ago could scarcely have imagined an eight hour trip between Austria and Washington D. C., much less have imagined that such a journey would become routine.
We need to have our eyes opened -- not to see unseen angels, but to recognize seen miracles. I pray that we might see not just the miracles of modern technology, but also to see the wonders that the Almighty placed in nature that happen just the way that they are supposed to every time.
They don't happen that way because they have to, they happen because God is just that great.
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