Up and Downs

I was sat in a plane last week and watched rapt at the information that was placed before us: flight time, altitude, temperature, and so on - I confess that a world formed by numbers in flux appeals to me. However, I was reminded of a flight I once took in America - a short hop. The plane took off, reached a given height and then immediately began to lose height until it found the runway.

To me that seemed pointless. Gaining height, maintaining a cruising altitude and then gliding back down when on the landing approach - now that makes sense to me. Imagine a flight path like Table Mountain in South Africa, as opposed to one of those pointy mountains that our kids draw for us with zigzag snow just below the summit! Why climb to a height only to come down from it immediately?!

I don't doubt that there are clear reasons for doing that - fuel economy maybe, but I wondered if this is not a pattern of flight that we adopt in our own lifetimes: we are born and we gain altitude through education, qualification and/or promotion until we run out of time and dive down to the 'landing'. I have seen lives lived like that - without any plateaus, without any cruising height.

It seems to me that a life without cruising height is a life constructed only of hopes followed endings - but without the enjoyment of the fruits of those hopes and dreams somewhere in the middle. Maybe that is what is wrong with modern living - we are all so focussed on status and excelling that in the event we reach that lofty heights that we seek, we have not a moment to enjoy the ride or its views before our mortality causes us to make our landing approach.

Where the danger lies

It is a truism in free-flight communities that the greatest danger to a pilot is when they are nearest to the ground. This may either sound like a statement of the obvious or the absurd.

Indeed, it is so. At the point of launch or at the approach to landing, each move is critical. In simple terms, the overwhelming 'enemy' in flight is the ground. Having a calamity ar 3000ft is not good, but a pilot has time to make corrections, throw the reserve or let the inherent desire to fly that the aircraft has take over. Sadly, the vast majority of pilots who are injured or worse are those at the beginning or the very end of their flight.

I find that my prayer life suffers from similar such perils. The calamity to prayer - giving up the attempt - is most likely at that moment when we seek to be with God, or in other words, the launch into prayer. If the peril is not praying, and sometimes, when conditions don't feel right, it is easier to abandon a time of prayer rather than press ahead.

In terms of the danger at landing, I liken this to the moment when a prayerful encounter should be drawn to its close. It is that very same moment when prayerful attention turns into daydreaming (though I see the good in the argument that at times, daydreaming is itself prayer). At landing, our prayers either draw to a close as they should, or they turn into the next shopping list.

In the middle of these two bracketing points, we can enjoy a safe and inspiring flight into prayer - largely free of that danger that can assault our moment with our Lord.