I'm not crazy about the smell of burning wires. Especially at 30,000 feet.
Recently on a flight segment from St. Louis to Cincinnati the distinctive odor of burning wires assaulted my olfactory senses. Wanting to believe it was my imagination at first, I glanced around me to see if other passengers seemed to have noticed the smell. They did. I thought to myself, “This can't be good.”
Jim White
But it was not until the young flight attendant rushed to the phone on the bulkhead behind the cockpit to confer with the pilot that I devoted my full and undivided attention to the matter. Struggling to maintain her composure but with the tremor in her voice betraying her anxiety, she announced that we would be making an emergency landing and that we needed to take from the seat pocket in front of us the same information sheet about emergency landings that she had gone over with us before we took off. It was so easy to be casual about the information then. We had all heard it before. Nothing to take seriously. This time, however, everybody paid close attention even to the details.
She went to those seated in the exit rows to ensure they knew how to unlock the door. When she asked for a volunteer to be responsible for the exit in the galley, I lifted my hand.
Across the aisle from me were two women who had been strangers until that moment. Faced with a possible crisis, however, they clutched each other's hands and squeezed until their knuckles turned white.
They were obviously from different worlds. The one by the window was dressed like a cowgirl while the other, I later learned, was a sports psychologist. Curiously, in that moment their backgrounds and compatibility was of no consequence.
“Do you think we're going to be alright?” the psychologist asked me. “Sure,” I said hoping my own anxiety didn't show. “I don't think there's anything to worry about.” She was not convinced.
Half a minute later, she asked the same question, this time with even greater urgency. “Do you really think we'll be OK?”
“Absolutely,” I said, hoping I sounded more confident than I felt.
A third time the same question and answer were exchanged.
Finally, I said “I'm a minister. Would you like for me to pray with you?”
She paused for a long moment and finally replied “Um. Not yet.” Actually, I had already started without her.
Later she asked “What kind of a minister are you?” When I told her “Baptist,” she said “So you are saying that whatever happens will happen and you will be O.K. no matter what?” I had to agree that was an accurate assessment of my thoughts. I couldn't have put it better myself.
To make a long story short, we landed safely in Indianapolis amid great fanfare from fire trucks and emergency vehicles of every description. No belly landing; no chutes deploying; no floating seat cushions. Just a lot of flashing lights. Some wire in the hydraulic system in one of the wheel wells had shorted, we were told later.
I could not keep the smile from my lips as I reflected later on my fellow passenger's response to my offer to pray. Now, it may be as my wife suggested after I arrived safely home, that she had been reared as a Catholic and confused my offer with a suggestion that she receive the last rites!
Several things in that 20-minute emergency landing strike me as corollary to church life. First, we need each other. Those two ladies did not ask about the advisability of clasping hands. They did not consider how such could be interpreted by onlookers. They didn't debate it. They just grabbed hold of each other's hands. Something about that experience drove them to discover very quickly and without words that they did not want to face alone whatever might lay ahead.
We need other people in good times to help us celebrate. And, in times of uncertainty and crisis we need their physical presence. We need a hand to hold. Or an arm to steady us. Or a shoulder upon which to weep. Or another dozen heads to help us figure out what to do next.
And, we also need words of encouragement from one another.
Second, how often have preachers said “Take the Bible from the pew pocket in front of you and turn to ….” But people are only half listening. They are preoccupied with other concerns. They heard biblical sermons but dismissed them as having no relevance to our specific needs or being too boring to hold their attention. We have not understood that the pastor was attempting to prepare us for some eventuality life (or death) may throw at us. On the plane the instructions were the same. The messenger was the same. What changed and made us eager to listen was the awareness of our situation.
Third, we have experienced such ecclesiological security that we have lost a sense of urgency. Is it time to get down to serious business with the Lord? “Um. Not yet. Let's see how things go. Jesus will always be there to call on if we need him” some churches and their leaders seem to say. “We want to keep our options open just in case, but we're doing O.K. so far” Meanwhile their churches are losing altitude and short-circuiting.
Finally, I considered that when they asked for a volunteer to man the emergency exit, they didn't ask how I felt about the mechanics involved in the inner workings of the door. They didn't ask if I had signed the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message. And I didn't ask them about their positions on predestination or premillenialism.
It is natural to debate such questions, of course. It is part of our inquisitive natures. But if we really understand and accept that a crisis for the souls of human beings exists, it is not normal Christianity to refuse to work with others unless their answers are the same as ours. Since no one ever gets out of this world alive, it seems reasonable to think that our concern for their exit to eternal safety would override other concerns.