Flying in an airplane!

Tomorrow morning I fly on Kulula.com airlines to Port Elizabeth to see my parents, due to a kind family in my church. I am thankful that I can travel so quickly, rather than go the 750+ kms by car. But I have reservations! I just read some of the reports of the Nationwide flight that left Cape Town the other day and LOST AN ENGINE! Below is one of the reports:

" VERNON BRICKNELL: I’ll run you through it David. During the departure of Flight 723 from Cape Town to Johannesburg - during the takeoff role just as the captain rotated the aircraft, that’s as the nose wheel leaves the tarmac - he heard a very loud bang. He proceeded with the takeoff and noticed a severe yaw of the aeroplane - which is a sideways slip of the aircraft - and on confirmation from the engine instrumentation he noticed he had lost power on the engine. He continued the climb and carried out the emergency procedures with an engine out - at that time he hadn’t realized that the engine had physically dropped off the aircraft. He continued the climb out and notified air traffic control that he had an emergency - they directed him to continue the climb and to return back to the airport. Only then was he told that the engine was missing. What had happened - we have since established after the civil aviation inspectors were on the scene this morning that some object went through the engine, and it had a catastrophic failure. The reason for the separation from the wing - which is a design feature of the Boeing aircraft to prevent any serious structural failure to the wing - the attachment structure of the engine to the wing fails and hence the separation of the engine.".

Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers as I look out on the wing of the flight and check the engines, just in case the pilot does not notice!

For another take read the IOL account.

Zacchaeus : Luke 19 vs 1 - 10

I had such fun preparing for yesterday's sermon because I love it when Jesus challenges all the stereotypes of the culture. Some of the stereotyes are universal in nature and remain with us throughout history, some are culturally and historically bound.

The comment that always seem to attract attention is Zacchaeus's height. It tells us that he had to climb in a sycamore tree to see Jesus.

In preparing for the sermon I read a sermon by Roberta C. Bondi, a wonderful theologian who has balanced academia with a profound spirituality and prayer life. She writes about a sermon she heard in which the preacher said this:

"There was once a bad, rich man in Jericho named Zacchaeus who heard that Jesus was coming to town and wanted to see him very much. When Jesus arrived, however, the crowds were thick and Jesus was short, so Zacchaeus couldn’t see him. Then he hit on an idea. He would climb a sycamore tree".

The preacher then went to ask why it is that we assume that Jesus was the tall one. I guess because we have idealised Jesus to an almost un-humanlike (well there is a new word for wikipedia) quality.

And so, because I am short, (well actually the height of the average South African housewife - 5' 7" - too old to know what that is in metres) I could feel offended and have to constantly make jokes about my height! But I do not feel insecure about my height because I am the perfect height for me, as you are for you. And so, while the main focus of this scripture is, in my opinion, about reparations and the restoration of justice as Zacchaeus repays those he has cheated, we are often side-tracked by the minor issues of height and other peripheral matters.

Which makes me wonder about how often this happens without me even being aware of it.