Everything sorted for a four and a half hour flight?
Yesterday I boarded my plane at Gatwick, London, heading for two weeks in Pathos, Cyprus. I had everything sorted, an aisle seat, flip flops, coffee, a Bill Hybels book on leadership, the latest Soul Survivor worship album plugged into my ears, and an ipod freshly updated with pod-cast’s and sermons I was eagerly waiting to listen to.
So there I was sitting in an Easy-Jet 747, flight number EZZE12, looking painfully like the perfect stereotype of a young middle class Christian leader. I think I even had a highlighter in my bag ready to illuminate any classic Hybels leadership wisdom! In that moment I thought I had everything sorted for a “God-centered” four and a half hours, but as usual I missed a bit of the point and God challenged me in a very different way.
Over the top of my book I noticed a guy a few seats ahead turning around to talk to the women who was sitting next to me, they obviously were together but due to the lack of Easy-Jet seat allocation, had been split up, but were making it pretty apparent to everyone in the rear of the plane that they pretty upset about it. And It became clear to me that “I was the solution,” and my seat offered the peace that, by now, the other passengers were looking for. All I had to do was offer my seat to the guy and everyone would be happy. I gave the situation another few seconds of thought and then turned Tim Hughes up a bit and turned the page.
This continued for an hour or so, until the women turned to me and asked me if I would mind moving, and of course, now I had been asked, of course I wouldn’t mind. And I even joked a little that “I had thought of offering it an hour ago!” Her response then completely stopped me in my tracks. She said “Why didn’t you then?” To which of course I didn’t have a response other than to make a kind of awkward embarrassed face at her.
Something hit home in that moment, I was so wrapped up with my christian book, my christian worship album, my coffee and flip flops that I missed the most simple way I could have demonstrated Christ’s love in such a basic way. What’s the point of reading leadership books if we can’t lead ourselves in very basic demonstrations of love. Maybe it’s just me, but i’m sure this applies to many of us. Let’s not let anything get to the point where someone turn’s to us and say’s “Why didn’t you then,” lets get in their first as Christ would have done.
October 9th, 2009 at 2:44 am
It works both ways this situation. Yes you could have offered sooner, but why didn’t’ they ask you outright an hour earlier instead of acting like spoilt children and disrupting the other passengers in flight experience?
October 12th, 2009 at 7:26 am
Jeremy my friend. That is the whole idea. True grace and mercy aren’t based on a person’s qualification for them. In factt he essence of grace is that we don’t qualify. My response should be the same whether they are acting like children or not.
October 13th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
I have to admit I have been in that situation a number of times. Sometimes the thought of sitting in the middle seat for 4 hours overtakes the soft whisper of the Holy Spirits voice and I snap back “why can’t the guy by the window give them his seat”. Not very merciful either.
Recognizing the greatest gifts come from giving of oneself when we really don’t want to is a sign of greater intimacy with Him.
Another confession, I would never have let on that I thought about it at all. Just another area of pride God has to work out in me.