There is no place like home. We had a wonderful trip exploring God’s creation. We spent time with some former Peninsula folks who blessed us amazingly. They pre-dated our time at the church, but we swapped stories and went through her 1991 church directory. That was a hoot, even though most of those folks are now with Jesus – at least the ones Janice Cook knew. Melbourne surprised us. We fell in love and didn’t see that coming.
But we had to come home. And that was the ordeal. It was the turbulence. It never ended. I picked seats in the back, a row of two. Christie could have her aisle and I could have my window. The danger of such a bold move is that back there, turbulence is magnified.
The flight to Auckland was smooth as silk, so this decision should not come back to haunt me. Wrong. The flight from Sydney to LAX was….bumpy. Always bumpy. There were probably 30 minutes of smooth flying over the entire 13 hours. We bumped up and down, left and right the entire way home. It was so bad, they cancelled beverage service for breakfast – and just kind of tossed food our direction. I passed.
I pride myself in being able to handle turbulence. But 12 hours of it was a bit much. It wasn’t always horrible, but it was always present. And on such a flight, I wondered what’s next? Is it going to get really bad? But, we are back and we didn’t make the news, so it never got that bad. But we never slept.
It was for me, a metaphor for life, even life with God. We have our expectations that life should be smooth, free of bumps and turbulence, especially if we are following Jesus. But that is far from our experience. Oh, the occasional bump is ok, but if it goes beyond our prescribed limits, it wears us down. Come on, God, make this stop. On the plane, as the hours dragged on, I asked Him for relief. It only came only when we landed.
Life can overwhelm. It can be so full of turbulence that we beg for it to stop. We expect God to make the bumps stop so that we can enjoy life on the smooth. But life with God doesn’t work that way, for many reasons. I have to learn to trust God while enduring the bumps of life. Our plane will land some day in the presence of God. The trauma will be past. This is not that day. So I cling to Jesus and His promises. There is no promise like home.