Cuban Airspace

A good portion of my time these days I can be found nestled into the seat of an airplane listening to how to quickly and calmly exit the aircraft through the clearly marked exits in the case of an emergency landing. In a matter of minutes after the important safety briefing I have already forgotten what doors not to use in the event of a water landing and I turn to one of the limited activities that can be done while wedged between the person sitting next to me and the side of the aircraft. Most of the time I will open a book or listen to some class lectures, but when all else fails I like to plug my headphones in and listen to channel 9. Do you know about channel 9? On United flights, channel 9 is the station that allows you to listen in to communication between your plane, surrounding planes and the various air traffic control towers. Although this might sound a bit dull, I find it quite interesting that while flying at over 500 mph 30,000 feet in the air with a plane packed full of people that the pilots demonstrate an amazing amount of confidence in the directions given by a person sitting in a tower who cannot see us or any of the other aircraft zipping by. On a recent red eye from San Francisco to Orlando I tuned into channel 9 as I was too tired to read. As I was listening to normal call and response from aircraft to local tower, I heard something that caught my attention. One flight called in and said "tower, we have found ourself in Cuban airspace and I do not believe we have permission to be here." I listened closely as I expected a slight panic from the air traffic controller. Instead in a sweet soft voice I heard "stay the course. That is the flight plan that we have for you." The pilot responded with a bit of unease "Control, flying through Cuban airspace means we don't have the appropriate checkpoints at which to radio in." Now at this point I thought the controller would scurry to find the quickest route correction and get them out of Cuban airspace. Again the controller responded, "Stay the course, you are on the correct flight plan". I was amazed. How could the person in the tower allow them to continue in unfamiliar airspace? I thought about how I would respond if I was the pilot. I would have probably changed course with or without permission and I know I would not have been as patient or kind to the tower operator. As I listened intently for the next communication between flight and tower I found myself leaning forward in my seat and slowly removing my headphones. In that moment, at 35,000 feet, I realized that the conversation I had been so caught up in was all to similar to conversations I have had with God. So often when I find myself in unfamiliar places, experiencing some form of discomfort, I have a tendency to call in and ask God to change my flight plan. Many times God provides the same response that the tower provided for the flight that day, "Stay the course".

As I thought upon this dialogue and its similarity with my relationship to God, I came to a few conclusions about my life of faith:
- I dislike discomfort of any kind. Stress, hurt, loss, pain or any other form of discomfort.
- Because I dislike discomfort, I do my best to avoid it or alleviate it as quickly as possible.
- It appears that scripture speaks of trials, pain, suffering, and discomfort being one of the means by which God forms us into the image of Christ and glorifies himself.
- My avoidance or quickly pacifying discomfort adversely affects my being shaped and formed into the image of Christ.
-Therefore if I desire to continue growing in my walk with Christ, I must rethink the role of discomfort in my life.

I am currently on this journey, realizing how quickly I attempt to remove myself and others from the discomfort of life. I am learning the value of not avoiding the valley of the shadow of death, but rather walking through the valley, fearing no evil and trusting in the very presence of God Himself. At this point though I would like to clarify a few things:
- Does this mean that we should stop all of our efforts to help people who find themselves in difficult, painful, uncomfortable or unfamiliar places in life? By no means! We should actually be encouraged to run towards them trusting in the sovereignty of God and His ability to use the uncomfortable times to glorify Himself and make us into the image of His Son. We should move towards people who are suffering with the confidence that our or their current situation is not unredeemable or outside the hands of a great loving father who has already demonstrated His great love and sovereignty in sending Jesus to redeem us from our helpless estate.
- Does this mean you willingly put yourself in difficult positions just for the sake of it being difficult? Again, by no means! We should not pursue trials for the sake of the trial itself.  But we have been told that until Christ returns there will be difficulty, discomfort, suffering and trials. So the idea has to do more with who we look to in the midst of trial and our theology of discomfort.

These are just a few thoughts on the idea of dealing with discomfort.

Has God recently told you to stay the course even at the cost of great discomfort?