The Wandering Jet Pilot

Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a jet fighter. The message just came in that your country is under attack, and you’re shattering the speed of sound several times over in your rush to get to the enemy. And then you see it—a huge, flying weapon of the likes no one has ever seen before, wreaking havoc on your country with an endless spray of bomb after bomb. But you orders were specific: take out those enemy jets flying around “The Mothership.” Still, you think you can see a flaw in the design, a chink in the beast's armor. Perhaps you’re the only one who knows about it. Perhaps it’s up to you to save everyone. Images flash through your head—the captain hanging a medal over your neck before endless crowds cheering their heads off. Would it be moral for you to abandon the enemy jets and take out the mothership? The answer, of course, is no. But I still caught myself, in a sense, yanking on the yoke and bursting toward that mothership.

If this jet fighter did exist, the obvious question to ask him/her would be “What’s your motivation?” If the motivator was fame and glory, he would have abandoned his mission and tore off for the mothership. If the motivator was the betterment of his country, he would have stuck to his orders.

What sparked me to write on this topic was a recent post at the rebelution blog. The post talked about doing the little things for God as well as the big things. It’s good to do big things for God, but it’s also vital to be faithful with the charges he’s already given us—seek righteousness, feed your spirit with God’s word, take up your cross daily… If we abandon these smaller jets in order to go after the mothership, (write a book) our motivation is no longer to glorify God, but ourselves. We need to seek the accomplishment of our Father, nothing more and nothing less, whether that eventually leads to big or small things by a worldly measure.

In the well known parable of the talents, (Matthew 25:14-28) the servant who is faithful with what he is given, is given more, but not before he proves himself to be trustworthy with what he’s trusted with. He focuses on being faithful with the small amount of responsibility he’s given, and therefore is rewarded with a larger amount of responsibility.

I confess, blog friends, that in the past few days I haven’t been faithful with what I’ve been given. I ditched my mission and headed for the mothership; I dropped my talents and headed for the gambling table, fooling myself that it was for God. But no more. Now it’s time to rededicate myself to serving God and God alone. If my book is published, then it’s because God decided to trust me with that responsibility, and He might; I certainly couldn’t have gotten this far without Him, and feel that He has called me in that direction. In the meantime I have some fighter jets to tend to.