Chuck Yeager turned 97 years old this past February. When he was just 24 years old (October 14, 1947), he piloted the Bell X-1 experimental plane. His goal was to get the plane to the Mach 1 speed.
At 25,000 feet, the plane dropped from the fuselage and its rocket fired up and ascended to 42,000 feet. As the plane sped up and approached Mach 1, it began to shake violently. This had to be very painful for Chuck because 2 days before, he had broken 2 ribs from falling off a horse. He didn’t tell anyone about his injury because he did not want to delay his chance to make history. As he hit Mach .96, the plane instruments went haywire. At Mach .99, the G-Force blurred his vision and turned his stomach. As it felt like the plane was going to disintegrate, there was a loud sonic boom followed instantaneously by silence. The plane had crossed the sound barrier and the air pressure shifted from the front of the plane to the back and transformed the flight into a calm sea of glass.
Up until this point, the sound barrier was once considered the unbreakable barrier. Many aircrafts self-destructed and many pilots died while attempting to break the sound barrier. Chuck believed that he could do it, but no one had any idea what it was going to be like on the other side of that barrier.
How many times are there barriers, in our lives, that we believe cannot be broken? Doesn’t this current time in our lives feel this way? We have no idea if we will break this Covid-19 barrier and if we do, we have no idea what it will be like on the other side. There are so many unknowns and the results have caused fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. People we love and care for have lost loved ones, lost their jobs, are in isolation, and are starving.
Missionaries live this way daily, including our Covid-19 world. They depend on our financial support to provide for their family and those they serve. They depend on our encouragement to help them not feel so isolated. They depend on our trips to help them feel encouraged and to get help. They depend on our prayers to lift them up.
As a Global Impact staff, we will continue to gather the information we need to be able to do what we can for those we serve. I want to challenge all of us to compare our prayers and efforts to the Mach 1 barrier. I truly believe that the calm sea of glass is what God wants us to experience on the other side of our prayers and efforts.
Teddy
Amen. Chuck Yeager is one of my childhood heroes and the movie The Right Stuff is on my all-time favorite list. Love the connection.
Be well and thank you.