40,000 feet High: Countdown to Landing

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…for lists. I was on a particularly long flight last week, and some of my musings in the air just happened to fit with the Weekly Writing Challenge. Thoughts?

5. Mortality

The odds of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 11 million, but mortality thunders a little louder when you’re hurtling over the Pacific. It’s in the sloshing water glass beside me, rattling in the teeth of air turbulence. It’s in the engine roaring, the constant hum of a tin can tearing through the clouds. Perhaps the odds are for us, but I remember again my frailty.

4. Sovereignty

Martin Luther said, “Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.” This is peace: knowing He holds life and death, same as the stars bound up in the heavens.

3. Scars

Far from shore, in the quiet space between heartbeats, old scars resurface. Between dusk and sunrise, dead dreams and ghosts whisper, tauntingly.

2. Grace

Forgetting what is behind, and straining toward what is ahead.

1. Home

Where I’m from? Where my family is? Where I live? There are outposts, places of belonging, scattered across the globe. But Home—

Well, I’m not there yet.