Jeff Skiles was the copilot of the plane that landed in the Hudson River a few years ago (US Air 1549, Miracle on the Hudson). They are making a movie of this incident and the actor who will play Skiles asked him a simple question: Why does he like to fly? For someone whose vocation is aviation, one would think this would be an easy answer but it was not for Skiles. The reason this question was so difficult for Skiles was:
How does one explain the feel of an open cockpit on a spring morning, or the challenge of an approach to a remote high altitude mountain strip, or perhaps the view from 7 miles aloft of a landscape on the other side of the world. How does one express a feeling to someone who has never felt it? . . .Only those who have experienced flight can truly understand its many charms. [1]
This illustrates, as we have demonstrated in the last few blogs, the fact that theoretical knowledge, our belief system, is not sufficient in any area of our lives. To truly understand something we must live it. We cannot say we truly understand Christianity, we cannot say we know what Christianity is all about unless we actually live it. We must become a new creation, not just profess belief.
Belief in Jesus and his death for our sins is a good first step. But it is only the first step of a life long journey God has planned for us.
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[1] Jeff Skiles, “Why Do We Fly”, Sport Aviation, December 2015, pp. 36-38.
