Ever Feel Like You Are Flying In The Fog?
By John Eiselt
John Eldridge writes about a terrifying flight he took with his family in Waking the Dead:
Rain and mist smeared the windshield as we strained our eyes ahead, searching for a break in the clouds. There’s no radar in these planes; bush pilots fly VFR-–visual flight restrictions. If you can’t see where you’re going, well, then, mister, you can’t go there. And you can’t keep trying forever, either; the clock that’s running is the fuel gauge. Three more minutes, and we’ll have to turn back.
“We’ll give it one more pass.”
“Fairweather Mountain” is a total misnomer. With a name like that, don’t you picture some lovely place in Hawaii or maybe Costa Rica–-balmy breezes, gentle green slopes, the weather always, well, fair? These mountains explode 15,000 feet or more above sea level, right off the coast of southeastern Alaska, sheer cliffs and foreboding glaciers."
Some of the world’s worst weather hangs out here. The pilot was yelling above the drone of the engine, “They get their name cause you can only see ’em in fair weather.”
Fair weather? Around here, that means maybe twenty days a year–-if you’re lucky.
Twenty clear days a year–-that sounds about like my life. I think I see what’s really going on about that often. The rest of the time, it feels like fog, like the bathroom mirror after a hot shower.
John Eldridge describes precisely what life feels like most of the time for many of us. What is even more precarious is flying in the fog without realizing it.
What do we do when we find ourselves in such a season? Do we pray more, go to church more, take on a new religious practice, or is it something deeper?
This weekend at Five Oaks, we’re going to dive into a story of a victorious warrior in need of a different kind of victory. Come, let the fog part as we apply this story to our own lives in search of the clarity and the healing that we all desperately need.