Learning to Fly and the God of Second Chances

My dad was a pilot. He flew helicopters in the Army and small planes in his personal time. He was also a flight instructor. On top of that, we lived on an airpark with a grass runway in our backyard, and my dad owned a small Cessna. With this background, you might not be surprised to learn that I became a pilot. However, the way it happened is probably different than you’d imagine.

I flew with my dad a handful of times growing up, but he was always the pilot. I never learned to fly, even though I could have gotten my private pilot certificate for free. Flying was my dad’s thing, and I wanted to distinguish myself from him. I got into motocross, drugs, and alcohol instead.

My teenage years were full of rebellion. I went through some tough things growing up and it led me to go off the rails. Instead of utilizing the opportunities I had, I squandered it all away on partying and thrill seeking. Eventually, when I was 25, I got in a motocross accident and broke my back, leaving me paralyzed from the belly down. It seemed like everything was lost.

Fast forward to a few years after the accident. I had encountered Yeshua the Messiah, and my life had totally changed. I was sober, and I had hope in my life again. The way this change occurred was through reading the Bible, so every year I would start at the beginning and read it cover to cover again. 

One day I woke up, looked at my phone, and I had an email notification that simply said, “Ezekiel 37.” It was from a woman I vaguely knew named Cindy. She was a friend of my aunt and I had participated in some volunteer events with her a couple times. I opened the email, and it was this long study on Ezekiel 37 and how it applied to my life. I was kind of groggy, so I decided I’d read it later. I ate breakfast, made some coffee, and opened my Bible. The exact passage I was on that day was Ezekiel 37! Cindy had no idea what I was reading. She just happened to send me a study on the exact passage I would be reading that morning.

Ezekiel 37 is a passage in the Bible where the prophet Ezekiel has a vision of a valley of dry bones. He is told to prophesy to the dry bones and an army is brought to life. It’s a powerful passage about resurrection from the dead, a foreshadowing of the great resurrection Messiah will bring on the Day of Yehovah. 

As I was sitting on the balcony pondering this passage, I heard a loud thud right next to my head. A bird had flown into the glass door. It was laying on the floor lifeless. I stared at it for a couple minutes and then moved to pick it up. Suddenly, it got up and flew away. I was like, “What was that all about?”

Later that day, I went and got an oil change on my car. While I was waiting, I decided to go roll around a park and pray. While I was on this path, I noticed a jogger running towards me. We nodded at each other as we passed. About 10 seconds later I heard, “Hey! Hey!” I turned around and the jogger was running back towards me. He came right up to me, stopped, and emphatically asked, “Do you read the Bible!?” I replied that I did. He then said, “Do you know that one day there is going to be a resurrection, and we are all going to come back to life?” Let me remind you, this was the same day all this stuff with the Ezekiel 37 passage happened. We talked for a while, and then I never saw him again. 

I recognized that Yah was trying to tell me something, but I didn’t know what. This was a cool experience that assured me of the resurrection, but it wasn’t like there was a huge significance for my life or anything…until…

Seven years later I got into a program called Able Flight, which helps people with disabilities learn how to fly. Even though I hadn’t had the desire to fly when I was younger, I figured if someone was going to offer me the opportunity to learn for free I should take it, especially now that I was paralyzed. The timing worked out perfectly, so I headed to West Lafayette, Indiana to spend 7 weeks flying. 

One night while I was there, I was on the phone with my friend Kevin and I was telling him the story about Ezekiel 37 that happened 7 years earlier. I was up late talking to him, and woke up behind schedule the next morning. I rushed to the cafeteria to grab some breakfast, but I missed it by a couple minutes. I had a flight lesson, but I wanted to get something in my body before I went. I stopped at a coffee shop near the airport. When I walked in, the barista was wearing a shirt that had Ezekiel 37 on the back. I was in a hurry, so I only talked to her briefly.

After my flight lesson, I was rolling back to my dorm when it hit me. That morning was the first time I did a take off in an airplane on my own. In a moment, it all made sense. I was like that little bird who flew into the glass door the morning Cindy sent me the Ezekiel 37 passage. I wasted my life and was spiritually dead, but Yehovah breathed new life into me and resurrected me. I had gotten up and flown just like that bird. What a strange, wonderful, and mighty God we serve. I had wasted away my life and my opportunities, but my Abba had given me another chance. He not only resurrected me spiritually, but He restored what the locust had eaten. He restored my life.