The unseen eyes keeping us on the radar of life
BY MAJOR MICHELLE GIBSON*
Living in Katherine, Northern Territory, I’ve flown in and out of Darwin International Airport many times – but never in The Salvation Army’s small Cessna 182 ... until recently.
My husband Niall and I are The Salvation Army’s Rural and Remote Chaplains in the NT, based in Katherine, 300km south of Darwin. We were ready to fly home, so, there we were, in the little Cessna, lined up on the taxiway with small planes, a commercial plane and a huge RAAF plane.
The control tower advised us that the military planes would be prioritised as they were participating in an exercise. So, the huge plane went, then a small plane, then the big commercial one, until we were alone. We were told to wait three minutes for the wake from the commercial plane to disappear before venturing onto the huge runway.
Niall has had his Private Pilot Licence for quite a few years, and I have flown in and out of many airports and small remote airstrips with him. However, I don’t think I have ever felt as small and insignificant as I did that day, sitting on that huge runway. It was scary!
When Niall first started flying, we lived in Albany, Western Australia. I was always comforted when he’d make a radio call and we heard back, “Albany Aerodrome”. This meant that no other planes had made a call in the last five minutes; we were on our own and could land safely.
These days, we fly in and out of a small airstrip not far from an Air Force base. Sometimes they are ‘active’ so the person in the tower gives us instructions. Other times, when they are not active, we listen to the radio calls from other planes to help us navigate when it is safe to land. We often say that although it’s a bit of a nuisance to wait for clearance to take off and land, it really is safer when the person in the tower controls where planes are.
So, returning to sitting on Darwin’s huge runway, the tower knew where we were. I couldn’t see the air traffic controller. From my side of the plane, I couldn’t even see the tower, but I could trust the person to tell us when it was safe to go. They wouldn’t let anyone else enter the runway while we were still there.
As we left the airport, they had us on their radar until we had left the controlled air space. We might have only been a dot on their screen, but they knew where we were and where any other planes were too.
Thinking on this later, I thought about how trusting this unseen person is like trusting God. God is like the air traffic controller. We can’t see him, but we know He’s there. The person in the tower has our best interest and the best interest of all the other planes in the area. We are more than a dot on the screen for the air traffic controller. We are people who need to be kept safe. God, too, has our best interests at heart. We are important to him.
Sometimes, when there is an Air Force exercise, we cannot fly directly to the places we visit for our work. Once, when we were going to a place almost directly west of Katherine, we had to fly north, west, and then south to avoid the big Air Force jets.
There’s a Bible verse that says, “We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps” (Proverbs 16:9 NLT). We might decide to do this or that, but if we trust God, he might advise us to go a different, safer way – his way.
I thank God that when I am in situations that make me nervous, like being on a huge runway, he is my strong tower (Psalm 62:3), watching over my every move.
*Major Michelle Gibson is a Rural and Remote Chaplain for the Salvos in the Northern Territory
