20 December 2005 Devotion for Today "First Flight" Luke 2:7

20 December 2005 Devotion for Today “First Flight” Luke 2:7

Tens of thousands converge today upon the ridge over looking Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to celebrate the centennial of the Wright brothers first airplane flight which took place on this date back in 1903. Our region is full of excitement and tourists are pouring into our town here in Elizabeth City. I watched yesterday as Homeland Security helicopters flew over Weeksville in preparation for the President’s visit. Engineers have built a replica of the Wright aircraft and have tried to get it up in the air, but have failed many times. Actor John Travlota, the Master of Ceremonies at the event, says that “perhaps the craft was not supposed to fly, but it did, and the secrets of how Wilbur and Orville ever got the machine up into the air is a secret that is lost in history. We will know more today when we try once again to get it up into the air.” Hopefully the rains will not dampen the enthusiasm of the enthusiasts who arrived this week to be part of history. President Bush, in his address to the event, said that the Wright brothers had originally planned the flight for December 13. But that date was a Sunday. The sun was bright and it was warmer that day. It would have been a perfect day to be outdoors. But due to their Christian convictions against working on the Sabbath, they decided to put off the flight until the 17th. On that date, bad weather also prevailed. The less-than-perfect conditions underscore the fact that adversity also flew into the face of the inventors one hundred years ago. But the rain and wind and biting cold were also the things that helped to propel that first flight. Undaunted, Wilbur and Orville turned their plane into the wind and changed our way of life forever.

I thought about that as I reflect how often I get upset when things down turn out the way I had planned them. Often I view the adversities of life as mitigating against what I want to do. However, there are times when these things which I view as adversities and problems are all part of the success that make any project worthwhile. If everything were easy and we could accomplish what we wanted to without anything ever going wrong, we would not appreciate their value and understand the cost of things that did not come with sacrifice or pain.

Even the birth of the Christ child was not without adversity. Luke 2:7 tells us that his mother Mary, “brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.”
Miles from home, tired, with no clean place to stay, anticipating a birth of a baby, Joseph frantically searched for a fit place for his wife to rest. It was not to be until a stable was offered to them. These were the conditions that our Lord was born into. Not a palace with sterile conditions with physicians attending a royal mother. It was a common, ordinary place full of every circumstance mitigating against the success of what God had set out to accomplish for us. Yet it was only right that Jesus was born in that stable. For he who was born in adversity ultimately overcame adversity and overcame sin and conquered death to give victory with us all.

The next time adversity strikes, and tries to discourage us may we think of the one who was born into it that He might overcome it. Have a blessed day!

 

(from 17 December 2003)

 

Rev. Jeffery C. Russell
Salem Baptist Church
Elizabeth City, NC
jefferyrussell@earthlink.net

 

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