Trust Your Gauges!

Back when I was a student pilot I got to experience a very unnerving phenomena that translates quite well to a spiritual application.

The morning I was to take my first solo flight the entire San Gabriel Valley was socked in with a thick fog. Seeing the disappointment in me, my instructor simply said, “Don’t worry about… we’ll just head up to the high desert and you can solo out there.” Since we obviously couldn’t fly under the Visual Flight Rules my instructor saw it as a wonderful opportunity to introduce me to flying with only instruments.

We headed out of El Monte airport and shortly after takeoff we hit the base of the clouds (fog is nothing more than clouds on the ground, you know) around 500 feet AGL and it was as if someone threw a white blanket on top of the windshield. “Cool”, I thought. Then something strange happened. I was convinced we had started into a roll. I began to make a correction and the instructor said, “Uh. uh, buddy...trust your gauges. Your horizon indicator says you’re flying level.” It was one of the most surreal and disorienting things I’d experienced. Had I made the correction I thought was needed...disaster was certainly around the corner.

God is very much like those gauges on the instrument panel. He guides you, directs you, lets you know when you’re going on the intended path...and He’s always correct. During those times in life of feeling disoriented and things don’t seem to make much sense, you have to trust your gauges...you have to trust God. What we may think is a logical correction to our circumstances may very well turn to disaster.

We certainly don’t know all the answers and God isn’t inclined to always give us specific answers. Sometimes we just have to trust the indications we get from God are correct and will lead us through to safety even if it feel like we’re completely blinded.

As a follow up to that morning...once we broke through the tops of the clouds it was a magnificent sunny flight. The clouds that had blinded me just moments before now looked like a soft, pillowy blanket below me and our heading was backdropped by the incredible San Gabriel Valley mountains. The solo went flawless as I made a few touch-and-gos around Apple Valley airport and promptly got my shirttail cut off...that’s tradition. Trusting the gauges brought me to that place, just as trusting God will get you to where He wants you to go.

What a perfect plan...what a perfect God.

Blessings!

Greg Morton
Copyright © September, 2015

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