Amelia Earhart never suggested that her 1932 solo flight from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland to a farmer’s pasture in Ireland was going to be easy. However, she likely never expected it to be as harrowing as it became.
Less
than two hours into the flight, her altimeter (the gauge that measures
altitude) quit working. Not long after
that, she encountered fog, then darkness and then a storm. When she climbed to a higher altitude to
escape the storm, ice formed on her wings forcing her back down. Without an altimeter and being unable to see,
she could only guess how close she was to the surface of the water. Soon, she was uncertain as to whether she was
on or off course and she had no idea how far she had flown.
At
dawn, she switched to her reserve fuel tank only to find that the gauge had a
leak that caused fuel to drip down her neck.
To add to her distress, an exhaust manifold cracked and flames began shooting
out of the engine. After 13 hours in the
air, Amelia wrote in her journal that she was flying dangerously close to water
dreading that a fire may break out at any moment.
Finally,
she saw a bright green strip of pastureland and landed as quickly as possible. It was a harrowing 15-hour flight, but she
became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.
One of
the reasons that Earhart was successful was simply that she simply gave herself
no other option. She refused to turn
back. She could not land in the
ocean. She had a compass, a heading and
a goal and she stayed with it until the end.
I like that
story because it reminds me that amazing things can happen when people live
with a purpose and a destination in mind.
Jesus
said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.
No one comes to father except through me” (John 14:6). I hope that you have found “the way” and have
committed yourself to following it all the way home.
Life is always better lived when
it is heading somewhere.
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