It was along flight – almost 8 hours long. We left as the sun was finishing it’s descent. A long,warm overnight flight. Scattered across the rear of the cabin, the OFC team settled down for a long nap, or a good movie. I was in a small seat beside a big man, and sleep, for me, was nowhere in sight.

So starting up a film, I prepared to try to enjoy the flight.

However, the movie I picked did not hold half the intrigue of a brief conversation I had a stewardess aboard the flight. We were flying on a massive AirFrance liner, and all of the flight attendants were, naturally, French. So, hopefully to the pride of my beloved high school French teacher, I attempted to order my inflight meal in the stewardess’s native tongue. Unfortunately, whenever the moment came to say “please,” I could not, to save my life, remember the French word for it. This created more than a few awkward pauses after I spoke my order, whereupon I would softly utter a pitiful, English, “please…” I afterward apologized, in French, saying that my French was “very bad.” She replied that it wasn’t, and that she understood me.

All of this comes down to an simple thought. The pain of my French teacher aside, this short conversation with the stewardess will stick with me much longer than anything else I saw on that flight. This will be a story I tell my friends and family for years to come. But this was a very silly little encounter. God has much bigger plans for this trip than any of us is really ready for; he will put new experiences and, more importantly, new people into our paths. And to each of these individuals, many of them wounded physically and emotionally, we will have an opportunity to show God’s love, forgiveness, and mercy, through music and media. And that, folks, is the reason God has seen it fit to bring us here.

Happily landed,
Aaron Brickle