Last night I saw a programme on the TV that dealt with the loss of an Air France jet airliner carrying over 220 people. This airliner disappeared off radar screens and after two years of tenacious searching was found on the ocean floor several thousand feet below the surface. Incredibly the flight data recorder along with the cockpit voice recorder were found and so the last moments of the flight were pieced together.

It would appear that one piece of equipment temporarily out of action because of icing at 33000 feet, caused a chain of events that ended in this airliner falling out of the sky. Being deprived of any outside visual cues because it was dark, and endeavouring to deal with certain anomalies on the flight deck the pilots became utterly disoriented and appeared to revert to basic instinct of preservation of life. By this I mean they failed to read the signs correctly and so pulled the plane into a climb. This caused at that height, quite quickly, a stall situation to set in and the plane started to lose height with attendant stall warning, which would have been very loud. I am saying this because these very skilled men were thrust into a terrible situation and because of inaccurate information had drawn wrong conclusions and unwittingly flew the plane into disaster. I am not here to apportion blame but to make a point concerning our own basic instincts.

We live our lives according to certain rules which we hope will enable us to live well and have a good time. Yes, I know this is very much an oversimplification but that is how I see it. We all have our own philosophy of life. Now think on this last statement. We all do what we think is right, according to the gospel of “us”. No wonder we are in a mess right across this world. Can we not see that doing our own thing and living how we want without much reference to others is dragging us down into an ever deepening pit, from which there is no escape. I am coming to this conclusion because just like the doomed people on the plane we are behaving entirely in a similar manner. We are responding to false or inaccurate inputs and drawing wrong conclusions both on a personal level and a national level.

At the time of writing this, it seems the whole world has gone mad. We have militant religious groups coming against their fellow human beings to kill them because they do not accept their philosophy. With hatred in their hearts, they are of the opinion that their actions are favoured by their god.

Is there no common set of rules we can live our lives by?
Is there no God who transcends all other gods?

Yes there is, but to many this will be unpalatable because it brings us to a very vulnerable place, and we do not like that. We always want to feel we are in control. We are decidedly uncomfortable when we realise we are not, and find it very humiliating to admit we do not have the answers and are wrong. To get back to where we were, there is a common set of rules and they are set in the Bible. I cannot think of any more powerful words than the Ten Commandments of God.(found in Exodus chapter 20 ) If we could fulfil those precepts, what a different world we would live in. Those commandments, applied in all of our lives, would impact on our personal lives, the lives of our families and radically change our society. Now comes the rub, none of us, on our own, can get anywhere near to keeping these Ten Commandments. We need help, and that is why I said this would be unpalatable. We do not like admitting we need to change, but that is exactly what is required. We need help to live our lives and this help has to come from outside of ourselves. In fact it has to come from God himself.

At present we all have our own ideas as to what must be done, and so we have the utter mess and chaos we see around us. Jesus said ” I have come to give you life and more abundantly”. He also said for us to come to him in repentance (asking for forgiveness of sin and turning away from our sinful ways) so that He can start working in us, to bring change and transformation. Now this side of eternity, we will never achieve perfection but with a common goal and set of rules to live by, an imperfect world could at least start to live in greater harmony. In short together, with God’s help, we can fly this thing and pull ourselves up out of utter disaster. Somehow I know this can never be a reality for the world as a whole, but it can be for you.

First we have to get our hands off the controls and allow the Captain to take charge. Lastly we need to trust Him to see us through because He does know best. As you come to faith and trust in God you will learn very early on in your new, transformed life, that God does has this world in His hands and you have an incredible future. There is much that could be said concerning the future but that is outside the scope of this writing.

Do not die without hope, put your life in God`s hands. Ask Jesus into your heart and start an exciting life with God. It is in a sense a pilgrimage, but one thing will always be true you will always have God with you.

David Weaver Sussex August 28th 2014