When You Miss Your Plane...

Posted on June 6, 2012 - 12:02pm in Pastor Andy's Blog

A few months ago, on a balmy summer evening, we received a tearful phone call from one of Tracie’s old college friends who was stranded at Orlando International Airport. She had missed her flight and couldn’t get a flight home until 6:45 am the next day. For some odd reason the flight that she could get had to go through Houston, Texas to take her back to Ohio! She called us, distraught, that she had missed her plane, and was missing a party that she had planned to go to that evening. Once we received this call, Tracie dashed down to the airport to pick her up. We had dinner together and then had a fun evening laughing and listening to a local band play at the local park.

As the clock struck 9:30pm, I offered to run Tracie’s friend down to the airport where she’d stay the night, before I completed a couple of other errands that I had to run. On the way to OIA, we had the most interesting conversation.

The conversation was centered on how frustrating it is to miss things that we really shouldn’t miss (like a flight!). We have all experienced that same feeling of self-annoyance, when we miss something. It can happen so easily to us. In these moments of frustration we have two choices. Firstly, we can get angry and stew in our frustration or secondly we can make the most of the new opportunity and turn it into something worthwhile. Obviously most of us would agree that the second option is the best, because it provides the opportunity to redeem our mistakes, and to redeem our time.

As we were joking on the way to the airport, Victoria and I were brainstorming about what cool things could happen to redeem her frustrating situation:

- Perhaps we’d see a bank being robbed and be able to foil it, gaining a huge reward for our efforts – and that this was only possible because Victoria missed her flight.

- Perhaps we’d witness an accident and because of our speed and care be able to save someone’s life – all because Victoria showed up at the airport too late.
- Perhaps we would run across some drunken ramblers and lead them to faith in Christ, thus affecting the trajectory of the rest of their lives and the location of where they would spend their eternity – all because there was too much traffic to get to the airport.
- Perhaps God had somehow spared Victoria from an impending tragedy, much like the lady who worked in the twin towers, broke her tooth and went to the dentist, rather than work, on the morning of 9/11?

As we were driving down 436, I realized that perhaps we need to spend more time living like we have missed a plane! Perhaps we need to live our lives in a way that are more attuned to what God would want to do in and through us, and more actively seek how God would redeem our time and do something extraordinary and eternal through us!

In our normal routine, as we go about our lives, we tend to believe that God is in the plan we have made (which He often is) but for some reason we forget to look for the redemptive opportunities that God has placed all around us. Perhaps a missed opportunity provides a greater opportunity for God to do something incredible?

Today – why not spend some time living like you’d missed your plane?