When I took the course for a private pilot’s license many years ago, I remember our instructor warning us to be very careful about pushing it in poor weather. Because we were not trained to fly on instruments only, we needed decent visibility when flying. Our instructor also reminded us that if we ever found ourselves surprised by bad weather or zero visibility, we had to trust our instruments, and not panic. Just keep our eyes fixed on our instruments and believe what they were telling us no matter what, because our bodily sensations would often try to tell us something different in those situations.
Now this sounds straightforward and easy enough until the time comes when one actually has to do it. I remember flying in to land at the little airstrip in a neighboring town, and during my approach on this occasion some thick fog blew in and totally obscured my visibility. Fortunately it didn’t last too long because I almost immediately began to experience some very uncomfortable and then scary spatial disorientation. A kind of vertigo that has in fact been identified as the direct contributing cause of many accidents. It happens because your vision is cut off from the earth, horizon, or any other fixed reference at the same time that your body is exposed to certain angular and/or centrifugal forces which you simply cannot distinguish from gravitational forces.
I began feeling more and more certain that I was steeply climbing, and it’s like my body was screaming at me to level out by pushing the wheel forward. Of course actually doing that would have resulted in crashing nose-first into the ground – which would have come from taking matters into my own hands and not keeping my eyes fixed on my instruments and really trusting them.
This reminds me of our absolute need to “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith…” (Heb 12:2 NIV). No matter how we’re feeling or what the circumstances. Because He is our fixed reference point, our horizon, our “sun of righteousness.” To remember this no matter how tempted we are to take our eyes off of Him or our “instruments” by not bothering with prayer, not bothering with worship, not bothering with His word.
Because when Scripture talks about walking “by faith, and not by sight”… “sight” must somehow include the feelings and emotions that can so strongly urge us in certain situations to take our eyes off of the only things that can help us. Praise God for His love and commitment to us through it all, to complete the good work He has begun in us!
Blessings, Bruce
