“Duck your heads as you board,” called the pilot.
Bending low to enter the doorway of the 19-passenger Beechcraft, we worked our way along the narrow aisle, carrying our hand luggage. Each of us found a seat in the single rows that lined the sides of the small plane. After stowing our bags under our seats and buckling our seat belts, we were ready for takeoff for the short flight from Portland, Maine to Boston, Massachusetts.
My seat was directly in front of a nervous young man wearing earphones and holding hands across the aisle with his young wife, who also was nervous and also had earphones clamped on her head.
While we were waiting for the engines to warm up, I took out my Bible and was enjoying the story of Peter’s miraculous catch of fish that early morning long ago after he had fished all night and had caught nothing. I was thinking, What a Saviour we have! He not only created and controls all the fish and the sea they swim in, but also the land we live on and the sky we were about to fly into.
I could hear this young couple behind me talking. “I’m scared of this little tiny plane,” the wife admitted to her husband. “Me too! Let’s turn our tapes as loud as they’ll go, and maybe that’ll help drown out the noise of the engines.”
I looked around the plane at the rest of the passengers. Everyone seemed fearful. But my heart was already soaring far higher than that Beechcraft would ever go, right up into heaven, into the presence of the Lord Jesus who invites us to “come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:1616Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:16). How I wanted to share my confidence in Him with these fearful passengers, but I was much too bashful to speak even to the ones sitting closest to me. So I began to pray that the Lord would “put the fish into the net” for me, just as He did for Peter.
Finally we took off. We had been in the air no more than five minutes when the nervous young man behind me put his hand on the back of my seat and said, “Ma’am, ma’am, what’s that at your feet?”
I looked down, and there blowing over my feet was a thin, continuous cloud of smoke. “Looks like smoke,” I answered him.
“Sure does,” he agreed, ripping off his seat belt and hurrying unsteadily up the narrow aisle of the shaky little propeller plane to tell the pilot.
Leaving the control panel in the care of the co-pilot, the pilot came back to my seat and, stooping down, ran his fingers through the smoke, rubbing them together to “feel” it. “That’s just from the air conditioner... nothing to worry about,” he assured us.
“Sorry to have bothered you, ma’am,” the relieved young man said to me.
“Oh, no bother, but here’s something that may comfort you,” I replied as I handed him and his wife each a copy of the little “Salvation Bible,” full of precious Bible verses that are able to lead any searching soul to the Lord Jesus, whose perfect love casts out all fear and brings those who believe on Him into His family as sons and daughters of the Almighty God.
They both read right through the little book while I prayed that the Lord Jesus would direct His Word to their need. I thanked Him for His promise, that His Word would not go forth without any return, but would accomplish that which He intended. “So shall My Word be that goeth forth... it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” Isaiah 55:1111So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. (Isaiah 55:11).
When we had safely landed, the young couple walked with me to the baggage-claim area, talking warmly all the way and promising me they would keep and read the little books. I may never see them again, but if each of them would turn to the God of love and accept His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, as Saviour, I will see them again in heaven.
ML-10/02/1988