Heightened Perspective
I’ve recently become aware of the notion that a lot of people start feeling like a poet while sitting in the window seat of a plane. I’d have to agree. I have always said that I do my best writing on a plane; window seat optional.
I flew to Houston this past week for my niece’s first birthday party. A three hour flight with nothing but me to do but write on the way there, since I took the red eye and I didn’t want to irritate anyone by turning the light on at 10:00 pm to read my Bible. But for the flight back home to Virginia, I had a 5:30 am departure, so I Bible studied in 2 Corinthians 9-10 as the sun came up.
It made me ridiculously emotional to an extent that isn’t typical for me.
I just kept getting hit with the overwhelming feeling of the greatness, glory, and overall majesty of God.
I know I’m not the first person to say this, but there is truly something about God’s creation. Especially when you are able to look at it from multiple different perspectives.
Think about it - the things we see on the ground are obviously impeccable and divine in their own right, but we’re used to seeing them so it all loses its sparkle from our point of view. Then contemplate the realization that God gave someone the idea to create a machine capable of flying through the air in order to transport people and cargo at unimaginable speeds.
Finally, consider the view and the perspective of someone who is in one of those planes. Your life is at the hands of the pilot, the mechanics who maintain it, and the flight crew that mans it, but most importantly and obviously, you are literally careening through the air by the grace of God alone to keep it all together.
Not to mention just how beautiful it is to see His creation from way up here. You see everything in a way that cannot be replicated through many other avenues, and it allows you to get a better glimpse of the intentionality and glory of God and His provision for you in a way that you probably take advantage of more often than not.
Personally, I love to see the tributaries of water. Their beauty can’t be claimed by man, and their complexity can only be attributed to God. The way that they change and expand over time mystifies me; growing like individual roots of water that reach out and find each other no matter what stands in their way.
They remind me of the way that roads look on the maps that my Dad used to keep on the passenger seat of his big truck (and still does, just in case), before GPS was a thing. When I would go on long haul trips with him during the summer, I would always look at those maps when I got a bit bored of reading whatever book I was engrossed in at the time. Even then, I always loved to find the strings of water that cascaded into the land, as well as the great seafoam green patches of forests.
But before I continue to stim out about geological things I’m not accredited to explain correctly, let me get back to my point.
Very early into our flight, we hit a lot of turbulence that has persisted on and off as we fly on. Not gonna lie - I was a bit concerned. My natural coping mechanism in situations like that is immediate prayer. And God - what a blessing that prayer is.
I’ve flown my fair share of times since my very first flight in 2020, but this flight was by far the rockiest to date.
As I was trying to ground myself in God’s sovereignty instead of focusing on the anxiety that was welling up within me thanks to the less-than-ideal flying conditions, it wasn’t entirely lost on me that the instability of the flight mirrored the way I’ve been feeling lately. So much has been going on in these past few weeks, and even though I’ve been doing all the right things, and truly trying my best, I too have felt like the ground was falling out from under me.
It’s cliché, but of course, I’m gonna go there:
No matter the turbulence and trials of our daily lives, God’s goodness and grace is unchanging.
All in all, I’m just a bit astounded by God. The Father, the Creator, the Planner - the most majestic, glorious, and gracious of all.
He answered my prayers by delivering us all home safely, and calmed my ever-growing nerves in a way that only He can.
I hope that I’ll eventually find the words to accurately describe this feeling and His righteousness adequately.
For now, I’ll focus on the way that God has already brought so many of the small tributary-esque details of my life back together; connecting small important things to make an even bigger blessing, or the right door opened at the right time, even if something I used to value got covered up or washed away in the process.
Watching from the window seat while God molds and connects the pieces of my life - pieces that I simply can’t be trusted to manage alone - is exactly where I want to be. I’m a bit artistic in my own right, but my ideas for myself will never hold a candle, or a brush, to the ultimate Artist of this beautiful universe.
Until next week,
— E. Byers, author of The Grassy Laine
