As much a traveling is exhausting, I secretly love that moment when the flight attendant says “It’s now time to turn off all electronics.” Though a huge part of me flinches with an internal scream of being ripped from my lifeline that the Internet has become to our everyday world, a bigger part of me enjoys that moment in time when I am forced to detach my thoughts from what’s happening in the world for a few hours and put away my phone and email and simply….. be….. still. Because God knows, I don’t do it enough when I’m home. I know I should. He knows I should. That’s why He left that instruction in Psalm 46:10. That’s why He gave us a day of rest on Sundays. Yet, we find all these reasons to stay busy. To multitask. To be attached at the hip to instant communication through a magical brick we hold in our hands.
Yet the plane takes off and my mind is forced to be still and simply gaze at God’s majesty of what He created below me. In that still moment, it’s a reminder of how small my worries are compared to how big this world truly is. It’s a reminder in rising above the clouds that there’s something even more waiting for us beyond this lifetime even above the clouds. It’s a reminder to simply take a deep breath and treasure how much we undervalue a new day to take each breath.
So even though I hate early flights, I am thankful for the early morning flights that remind me to be still. And know that He is God. And just like the pilot of the plane, trust that He is in control of the path of my life.
