When I was 16, my family of 5 flew to Kansas City. My Dad is a pilot and had rented a Beechcraft Bonanza to fly us there. The airplane seated 6 and had a comfortable interior. My older brother sat in the co-pilot seat, and my mom and sister and I were seated behind them. It was a gorgeous, late fall afternoon when we took off, with clear blue skies. It was perfect flying weather. We saw the farm fields of Illinois, and the cities of Chicago and St. Louis below us as we flew over, thousands of feet above. There was not the slightest hint of turbulence. It was like riding on glass. We came in for what we all expected to be a perfect finish to the flight. As the nose wheel touched down, however, the tire exploded. When this happens the pilot can lose directional control of the aircraft. Things suddenly got rough as we came up, and then down hard again as Dad struggled to land. I remember him working the rudder pedals and saying tensely, "Lord, help us". I did what any logical 16-year-old girl would do, which was to scream.  (I'm sure that helped my dad immeasurably.) The plane finally stopped, and we got out with shaky knees. The tire was completely in pieces down the runway. We had landed on metal which a witness told us had sent a lot of sparks flying up.

My Dad was angry. Basic maintenance had clearly not been done on the plane. A check of the maintenance records shortly after showed that the tire should have been changed a long time before we ever took that flight. (It hadn't been changed in 800 hours and was a 2-ply rather than an 8-ply tire.) As a pilot, Dad had trusted the aviation company to do what was needed to help us fly safely. It hadn't been done. What had started out as a textbook perfect flight nearly ended in disaster because of this carelessness.

I've been thinking lately about how we can start out strongly in our Christian lives. We can do all the (Bible) text book right things initially that we need to do to grow in the Lord. We can pray and read our Bibles, sit under good preaching and take care about the condition of our hearts. But then we can get careless. Basic maintenance can go undone in our hearts. It goes unnoticed, perhaps, by everyone else. And then…the tire blows. How to prevent the disaster? Go back to the basics. Allow the Lord to do the maintenance. Pay attention to basic issues of heart attitudes, time in prayer and reading God's Word. Stay humble. Keep your eyes on Christ and His sacrifice on the cross. He alone can save. He alone can sanctify us. It is He alone who can keep us in the faith. When we take the time to take stock of the condition of our hearts, and go to the Lord for the maintenance needed, we, too, can finish well.

Here is a short video from a friend of ours, Scott Diekman, from his blog Stand Firm. His daughter Paige graduated from high school this spring as salutatorian. Her brief, biblical challenge at the graduation ceremony is the challenge to all of us as believers in Jesus Christ.