You can do a great deal in seventeen hours. And until last week, you could make the longest, non-stop flight in the world from Dallas to Sydney.
But now. . .
Emirates has stepped up to the plate to provide a non-stop, 17.5 hour flight between Dubai and Panama City.
Seventeen-and-a-half hours! I say ugh and wow in the same sentence.
I fly several times each year. I do not like long flights. And two hours is long for me. While I can get a great deal of work done on cross-country or international flights, I find them boring. I can’t sleep on a plane. Biscoff cookies make a trip much, much more pleasant. But you can only eat so many on a Delta flight before the sugar kicks in and then you wish you had not done so in such a confined space. And I doubt if Emirates serves Biscoff.
We are only a little over a century from the Wright brothers’ flight. And less than a century since Lindbergh made the first trans-Atlantic, non-stop flight from New York to Paris in 33.5 hours (That’s a lot of Biscoff!).
Joking aside, we find our Lord’s grace in such technological advances. The fact that such a distance can be covered so safely and quickly is simply amazing. The science and engineering behind such a feat is fantastic. “Great are the works of the Lord [in His universe], studied by all who delight in them” (Ps 111:2, ESV).
On day one, the plane barely gets off the ground. The next day, you are flying over the ocean. Sometime later you move from a seventeen hour flight to seventeen-and-a-half. Only the Lord knows what tomorrow will bring. And while we must be wise stewards with whatever that future might be, we are only guaranteed today. Will we be faithful with the Kingdom opportunities granted in a world of non-stop flights from Dubai to Panama City?
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Patrick Johnstone was last week’s guest on Strike the Match. Check out our conversation. iTunes | Android | RSS