Flight 219
The cabin seemed to let out one collective sigh of relief when the captain announced their landing in Detroit. After a short scuffle following his gun malfunction, Bradley was subdued, bound with zip cords, stashed away somewhere in the back of the plane.
Meredith was safe.
She was going home.
Justine still gripped her son.
“You should probably make sure he’s buckled in,” Meredith told her gently.
Justine nodded, wiping tears from her eyes before tightening West’s safety belt. “I just can’t believe it,” she breathed. “Just can’t believe it.”
“Mommy?” West’s voice was squeaky.
“Yeah, buddy?”
“That was a bad guy, right?”
Justine let out her breath in what sounded like a half-laugh, half-sob. “Yeah. He was a very bad man.”
“Will the police rest him?” he asked.
Justine nodded. “Yeah. They’re gonna arrest him.”
He leaned his head against his mother’s shoulder and shut his eyes. “I wanna go home.”
Justine responded by wrapping both arms around him. Meredith couldn’t blame her. She’d only known the little boy for a few hours and felt like doing the same. If this was how she felt toward a small child she’d just met, how much more tender and loving did her heavenly Father feel toward her right now?
The thought left her feeling protected. Cherished.
But still far from safe.
Grandma Lucy’s strange prayer at the gate. Connor’s worried texts. Had God been trying to warn her? If Meredith hadn’t been so busy worrying about her past and planning her future, would she have heard his voice more clearly?
But what could she have done?
God had known. The second Meredith sat down in this seat, God had known what terror was waiting for her. He knew when the Grand Rapids airport closed, when she stood in line to demand a different flight. All that time, had he been trying to keep her off this plane? Or was this part of his original plan all along?
On one of her recent podcast episodes, Meredith had answered a listener’s question about prayer. Does it really change God’s mind? The heart of the question, and one which Meredith had heard multiple times phrased in multiple ways, was does prayer actually make a difference? Or does it just give believers peace and a connection to God during difficult times?
Meredith couldn’t believe that prayer was simply for a Christian’s benefit. There were countless examples in the Bible of God acting in direct response to his children’s prayers. King Hezekiah recovering from what should have been a deadly illness. Even the angel of the Lord agreeing to Abraham’s plea to save Sodom and Gomorrah if enough righteous souls could be found.
And yet God always knew the future. Always knew what prayers his children were going to pray and how he was in turn going to respond to them. In short, it was a mystery but one which left Meredith even more convinced of the need to pray than otherwise.
What if Grandma Lucy hadn’t been so bold? Would Bradley’s gun have gone off? Could that one prayer have saved Grandma Lucy’s life? Or had Grandma Lucy only been aligning herself with facts that God had already decreed, with events the Lord had already set in motion?
Meredith would never have all the answers. But she was glad to know that others were praying for her. With Bradley’s demands being streamed live from the cabin, there was no way other believers on the ground didn’t know about the terror the passengers faced on Flight 219. Had Connor been watching the news? Had he been praying for Meredith specifically?
For a minute, she pictured him logging onto Living Grace’s multiple social media accounts. Please pray for Meredith, who is one of the passengers on Flight 219. She imagined the thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of Christians praying for her.
Bring Meredith home safely. Help the other passengers. Be with them all, dear Lord.
But she’d never given Connor her flight information. All he knew was she was leaving Boston and landing in Detroit. Would that be enough? Did he know? Was he one of the Christians on the ground interceding for her right now?
And in the end, did it really matter if people were praying for her specifically? Of course, hundreds of thousands of people must know about their flight by now. Bradley’s entire stunt had been to raise awareness to the situation at that Detroit school, and he’d forced dozens of people to record his tirades live on their phones. How many Christians were saying prayers for their safe landing at this exact moment? Those prayers couldn’t be any less effective if they didn’t mention the passengers by name, right?
“I wanna go home.” West was still crying in the seat beside her, and Justine was doing her best to calm him down even though she was still in tears herself.
It was time for Meredith to focus on others besides herself. She ran her hand on West’s head. “You’ve been such a brave little guy,” she told him.
Justine looked up at Meredith and smiled gratefully.
West’s lower lip quivered.
“Do you want to know a story about some brave, brave men in the Bible?” Meredith asked. He nodded, and Meredith glanced at his mother to judge her reaction. Justine’s expression didn’t change, so Meredith went on. “Once upon a time, there were three men named Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego. They loved God very much, but the king they worked for was a wicked, wicked man.”
“Like a bad guy?” West asked with wide eyes.
In spite of the adrenaline still surging through her body, Meredith found herself smiling. “Yes,” she answered. “Like a bad guy.”
He nodded sagely, and Meredith continued.
“The wicked king told Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego that they should all bow down to a false god, but they knew the Lord didn’t want them to do that. So do you know what the wicked king did?” Meredith hesitated, wondering if after the trauma they’d all just been through she should have picked a different story. She hadn’t realized she was trembling until West’s mom reached out and rubbed her shoulder, Justine now being the one to comfort Meredith.
Encouraged by the small gesture, Meredith tried to find a way to explain the next part of the story in language that wouldn’t sound too scary.
“Help!” A terrified shout from the back of the cabin interrupted her thoughts. Meredith twisted herself in her seat to see what was happening. Had Bradley escaped his bonds?
“Fire!” The yell rang out at the same time as a piercing alarm deafened the passengers aboard Flight 219.