Struggle With All His Strength
In life there is a saying we use when times are tough we say, “we are struggling to stay afloat” or aloft. We are using this metaphor to tell people that things are hard and we are using everything we have to keep going and not lose our position. That phrase can be used to describe struggles with money, stress, or even spiritual trials.
In my younger days I took flying lessons. One of the things you learn early is how air density affects the amount of lift your wings produce. An example of that is a plane at sea level on a cold day moves through dense air which creates a lot of lift. Conversely a plane at 7,000 feet above sea level on a hot day has thin air density so it has to move faster to create lift. What this means to a pilot is if the air is dense your takeoff distance is short but if the air is thin the takeoff distance is longer. I came to understand this better when I did my short cross-country flight.
My regular airport was 971 feet above sea level. I lived in a hot arid state at that time. I knew about how much runway I needed before the little Cessna 150 would have enough lift to takeoff. The time came for me to fly solo on a short cross-country trip. The normal destination for the student pilots to fly to was just a short distance away from the home airport but it was in the mountains. I took off without any trouble and flew straight to the second airport. This airport was 4,975 feet above sea level and it was summer time. I landed without incident, stopped, got a drink, and filed a flight plan with the FAA for my trip back home.
I taxied out to the end of the runway and started my takeoff roll. My plane felt like it had a load of bricks holding it down. The plane could not produce the lift I needed to get off the ground. I was halfway down the runway and still not in the air. The plane continued to role engine screaming trying to get enough lift to break free of the runway. At some point before the end of the runway the wheels finally started to liftoff the pavement. My engine was working properly, the flaps were down to create more lift but the plane just was not climbing like it always had at my home base. I kept the planes climb rate at its maximum. It seemed to be all the plane could do just to stay in the air. The problem I had was I needed to clear a mountain that was 10,000 feet above sea level. That meant I needed to climb at least 7,000 feet above the airport before I could safely clear the mountain. The little Cessna 150 labored to climb at all. My only option was to circle around for almost 30 minutes struggling to gain altitude. When I thought I had gained enough to start toward the mountain I pointed the nose of the aircraft toward home. I still needed to gain 2,00 feet in altitude before I could clear the mountain. I thought if I continued to climb as I flew toward the mountain I would gain enough altitude to fly over. My forward progress was fast, but my climb rate was to slow. As the plane moved toward the mountain, I realized I was not going to gain enough altitude to clear the mountain top safely. I was about to turn the plane away from the mountain when I flew into an updraft. An updraft is caused by the wind coming off the top of the mountain and swirling up. My plane flew into the updraft, and it lifted the plane at an accelerated rate. That plane was not capable of that type of climb rate on its own. The wind had increased across the wing of the aircraft and as long as I stayed in that updraft I was climbing fast. In fact I gained more altitude in less than a minute then I had gained in the previous 30 minutes. That updraft had given my aircraft the lift it needed to clear the mountain. The rest of the flight was uneventful. When I landed my instructor wanted to know how the flight was. When the debrief was finished both the instructor and I knew my lesson in density altitude had taken a giant leap.
The other day I was reading my bible. In the book of Colossians Paul talks about some of his labors. He was in a Roman prison and still trying to keep up with his mission work to all the churches he had started. It was a hard life to say the least. In Colossians 1:29 it says “For this purpose also, I labor striving according to His power, which mightily works within me”, one version says, “for this purpose I struggle with all His strength which works within me”. The picture is that of my aircraft struggling to climb in air that was thin. It could not generate enough lift to clear the obstacle ahead. Once I entered the updraft the plane was lifted high above the mountain. It wasn’t the aircrafts power; it was the strength of the updraft that lifted us. Another illustration we see all the time on nature shows is an eagle soaring high above a mountain. The eagle is not flapping its wings rather it is riding the thermal or updraft. The only thing the eagle must do is stay in the updraft. The eagle doesn’t have to struggle to stay aloft it has to rest in the power of the updraft.
We live in struggle and effort every day. It seems that the devil is constantly dragging us down and like my little plane we can’t seem to get enough lift. We circle trying to gain altitude spirituality, but the air is too thin. We need to learn to get in God’s thermal or updraft and struggle to stay in it. Then and only then will we understand what it means to “Struggle with all His Strength”.
