Turning Points - We all Have Them

Flight KL 592 - Setting the Stage

As I embark on writing this first-hand account of KLM Flight KL 592, November 26/27, 2021, it’s not my goal to engage in throwing stones or casting accusations. These do nothing but try to put the blame on someone else, for my discomfort.

As bad as Flight KL 592 was for all on board, for me, it was not the main event, but served to reveal the main event with defined clarity.

I’ve since written a fourteen page document, my account of it all, but it’s not a legal one; it’s a factual one, and a heart one. Its purpose was to challenge the Dutch minister of health, the CEO of Schiphol Airport, and the CEO of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, to acknowledge, face to face, the main event at hand, and to search their own hearts regarding their participation in it. Hopefully they have all received it by now.

While I don’t want my humanity to put aside what my spirit learned on November 26, 2021, neither do I want to shrink back into complacency, silence, or comfort - people are suffering, desperate, and confused.

So what then, how do we live today? The question that we all now ask.

I want to share a few stories from when I was young - life’s turning points which significantly shaped who I was on November 26, 2021, why I responded the way that I did, and why I can use that night to continue shaping and molding who I’m going to be tomorrow.

Some of you may know these stories and for others they will be new, but I’ve never held them with the conviction which I have today, and how they apply to me now.

- Wisdom

When I was 13 yrs old, I lay in my bed in my house at 27 Victory Street, Gweru, Zimbabwe, and I prayed, “God, give me wisdom. You said that if I want wisdom I could ask for it.”

Wisdom. Victory.

As I lay in bed the other night, back home in Calgary, and contemplating this blog in light of today’s world, I came to one central thought, “God, give me wisdom like Solomon had.” The thought became my prayer again, and it remains my need.

We do wrestle, but not against flesh and blood - we wrestle against powers and principalities in high places. Sometimes, though, it produces conflict between flesh and blood, but as much as it is in our power to do, we strive for peace with all men.

Love conquers all. It already did, perfectly and completely.

The earth is the Lord’s, not the devils, and we are children of God, co-heirs with the only One who has the government on His shoulders.

Our earth was made for peace, not for pain. It was made for love, not for hate. It was made for freedom, not captivity.

- Another Airplane

Air Rhodesia Flight RH 825, September 03, 1978.

My sister and I had been at a kids camp in Kariba, Rhodesia, but now at the airport ready to fly back to Salisbury. We were both taken off of this flight and my parents, waiting in Salisbury for our arrival, were phoned and told that we would not be on it, but had been rebooked on the next one.

The plane took off from Kariba Airport at 17:10. Shortly after takeoff, the starboard wing was hit by a heat-seeking surface-to air-missile. An emergency descent was carried out and the crew tried to make a landing in a large clearing in the bush, 16 KM from the southern shores of Lake Kariba. During the landing the undercarriage struck an irrigation ditch, which cart-wheeled the aircraft and it broke up and caught fire. All 4 crew and 34 of the 52 passengers died in the crash.

Of the survivors, only 8 would escape with their lives, the rest slaughtered at gunpoint by freedom fighters at the crash site. One of the 8 survivors would ultimately take his own life.

At the young age that I was, unbeknown to me, this was a watershed moment. God did though, possibly my parents thought it might be, but for me it was never a thought, I just lived the next day.

In recent years I’ve been reminded over and over about this event, though more recently while writing about grace, researching the events of my life and their surrounding circumstances. While doing so I became keenly aware that God has life in His hands, your’s and mine. Every day we live is known by Him, the number of hairs on our heads He knows. He knows me, He knows you!

Whoever it was that took my place on Flight RH 825 I will never know, but thank you - I pray that my life never wastes what you gave me. Today, could flight KL 592, November 26, 2021, be the watershed moment when I find out why?

- And a Lighthouse

When I was about 6 years of age, a good Baptist kid growing up in time of the Rhodesian war, I had a dream. In the dream I saw the world as if looking from out in space. The earth was engulfed in raging flames, and in the midst of the flames it was plagued with war and hatred, chaos and violence.

I had this dream on many nights, waking up petrified, distraught each time. One night, waking from the dream, I ran to my mother and told her of it. I also told her that I heard a voice say that the only way to get through this, was with Jesus.

Right there, mom helped me to voice my acceptance of Him. I never had the dream again, but it has always stayed with me in the eyes of my heart, to be a lighthouse for my life, guiding me to today, and what’s to come.

My prayer is that we each have the courage to look back on our life’s turning point moments, we all have them, and to know that they are the fuel for who we are, and who we are becoming - the impetus for renewed convictions in these days. We are the light, and light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

I pray for you, I pray for me, I pray for us all, that the eyes and ears of our hearts will be open, hearing not from me or man, but from the Spirit of Jesus Himself, and that our hearts will be still in knowing Him.

You are enough, with Holy Spirit in you, to stand in the fire, to sit with the lions, and to walk through seas. He’s still the same God!