365 Devotionals

Listen to the Stewardess

The wings of the Boeing 7272 quivered slightly as the big plane nosed onto the runway. In a few minutes before flight 921 began its sprint down the New Orleans takeoff strip, I was reading my latest issue of TIME magazine.

Meanwhile, the head stewardess and her assistants were running though the choreography known as the passenger safety routine that goes on before each flight. They pointed out the various emergency exits and demonstrated the use of the oxygen masks in the event that the cabin were to become depressurized. I've heard the routine enough times that I think I could recite it word for word. It's one of life's procedures that most of us take for granted.

Momentarily I looked from reading to watch the stewardess four rows ahead. She held the mask over her nose and mouth and showed the connection of the plastic tubing to the shelf over the seats. Everybody I could see - except a wide-eyed 12-year-old boy across the aisle - was involved in something other than listening to the stewardess. Her demonstration was an exercise in talking to herself.

I looked at those around me - a salesman already sleeping, a businessman reading a financial report - and considered how similar we all were to those waiting for heaven. Airline passengers, of course, ignore emergency instructions because they don't believe they'll ever be needed. Could it be that the Christian who neglects his prayer or Bible study may actually not believe also? If an airplane passenger knew that an air disaster were as sure as we believe the coming of Jesus is, he would listening to every single word the stewardess had to say.

"Therefore be ye also ready," Jesus said in Matthew 24:44, "for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh." Jesus used several parables to urge us to be prepared.

Like the airline passengers, we have had plenty of instruction and warning. Jesus is coming again very soon, and we dare not let the trivial things of this worldly life stand in the way of our being prepared for the Lord's return.

- Gary B. Swanson