The Next to Last Phase

Surviving The Suffering" has now finished its proof review and has passed all of the spelling and grammar checks. Hopefully it will only take my publisher a few days to make the final revisions on the print copy. That is the last stage in actually writing the book.
From here it goes to marketing. I understand that phase takes a little longer than the others, up to three months, as they prepare the book for release. They will be making a fifteen second television commercial, I understand. I am still hopeful that the book will be out by Thanksgiving or Christmas. Many things are yet to be decided by the publisher, but it appears that the book will be 243 pages long and the softcover version will be $14.99. I am hoping that your attention spans and pocketbooks will be at least that deep.

Surviving The Suffering First Proof

I will be taking a break this week as I have just received my first printed copy of Surviving The Suffering for review. This requires a word-by-word examination, looking for any spelling or grammar errors, and is quite time consuming. Once the proof has passed review, it goes to marketing for a few months before it is released, hopefully before Christmas.

Suffering On Instruments

I was intrigued by an analogy drawn by Alistair Begg comparing faith to flying on instruments.  I have been flying for over twenty-five years now and have been instrument-rated for over twenty of those years.  My first instrument training involved sitting many hours at a flight simulator, and then progressing to fly an airplane with a device called a hood, which one wears like a giant visor and prevents you from looking out the windows.  (This is done with an instructor, of course.)  We are taught to scan our instruments from side-to-side and up and down, in a rhythmic pattern, constantly cross-checking the dials.  To see what this looks like outside the windshield, I offer you the following short video.  (The dramatic change occurs at about one minute.)

There are six basic instruments you must constantly observe to keep the aircraft upright, arranged in a standard pattern.  On the upper left is the airspeed indicator, lower left the turn coordinator, upper middle the artificial horizon, lower middle the heading indicator, upper right the altimeter, and lower right the vertical speed indicator, which tells you how fast you are climbing or descending.  Of all of these, the most crucial is the artificial horizon, and that is why it occupies the central focus of the panel in the upper middle.

 This instrument is run by a gyroscope, which always remains perpendicular to the earth.  The glass windows and markings, then actually move around the gyroscope.  When you are in a turn, it looks like this:

This instrument is so important that if it fails, it is hard to keep the plane upright.  Although we are trained to fly the aircraft using the other instruments if this one fails, it is very difficult and several crashes have occurred because this important device failed.  It is so important that I had a second one installed in my small plane as a back-up:

When pilots become disoriented in instrument conditions, however, it is usually not because the instrument fails.  It is because they do not believe what it is showing them, and assume it has failed them. 

So, your life depends on this instrument working and on believing it.  You cannot look outside the cockpit for guidance.  You must stake everything on your faith in what it is telling you.  And I think this is the point that Alistair Begg was trying to make. 

When we are undergoing trials, we must stake everything on our faith in Jesus Christ.  And of the two problems that can occur while flying blind, we never have to wonder about Christ having an instrument failure.  That part we can always be sure of, so there is no need for a back-up Savior. The only variable we have to deal with is our trust in Him.  No matter how stormy the weather or how little we can see ahead of us, we must have absolute belief in God that He will keep His promises. 

Romans 8:28 tells us, "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose."  Not some things or the occasional thing, but all things.  We may experience extraordinary sufferings, even unto death, knowing that it will be for good, either in this lifetime or eternally.  And if we cannot see the temporal, earthly benefit outside the cockpit, we must believe that there is eternal benefit being accomplished. There are many things that I have suffered where I could not see how any possible good could come from it, but I must trust that God is accomplishing His will and I will know what His purpose was when I reach the next life.

And in Romans 8:38-39 we are advised that nothing, not anything, shall separate us from the love of God.  In the preceding verse 37, we know that we are more than conquerors.  To conquer implies that we gain victory, we win.  Does that mean that we will successfully defeat all of our suffering in this lifetime?  I think not.  But even in death, we gain victory by virtue of eternal life.  And nothing bad in this world, not even death, can separate us from God's love.

These two promises, that all things work for good and nothing will separate us from the love of God, are among many that provide us our instrument for staying upright.  To disbelieve what God is telling us is akin to disbelieving our artificial horizon, and we will become disoriented and very likely end up in a death spiral as we spin out of control.  An old book written by a World War II fighter pilot, Robert Scott, was called "God is My Co-Pilot."  What a wonderful notion to think of Christ in our plane beside us, giving us advice and aid.  I don't think my title, "God is My Artificial Horizon," would have been nearly so catchy.  But I think you get the point.  When we are flying blind in life, on instruments, we must trust what God has told us and know it to be true.

Oh, and by the way, there is another name for the Artificial Horizon, a name that describes how the plane is oriented to the world below it, and I think that our belief and reliance on God says a lot about how we are oriented to the world around us.  It is also called the Attitude Indicator.