SUNDAY: Bible Study - 9:00 AM | Worship - 10:00 AM | PM Worship - 6:00 PM WEDNESDAY: Bible Class - 7:00 PM ~ 8110 Signal Hill Road Manassas, Virginia | Office Phone: 703.368.2622

SnowyAirport          Last week Teresa and I were stuck, seemingly forever, at Midway Airport in Chicago. It seemed like a hundred thousand others were sharing our entropy and panic.  We all stood in lines for three and four hours to book flights that were immediately cancelled.  Some flights had pilots but no crew, crews but no pilot, crews and pilots but no aircraft. I thought, “I’ve read Dante and this would be a better 7th level of hell than the one he described.” So many flights to Dulles had been cancelled that we booked one to Raleigh, NC. “Just get me east of the Mississippi, South of the Mason/Dixon Line, and out of Chicago…” I begged.  We got out pretty quickly, compared to others – we only had four flights cancelled and got on the only flight out of Midway to Dulles for three days. Some folks are there still – like that guy Tom Hanks played in Terminal.

            Many guys in my line of work would get a really entertaining monologue out of the experience and inject it with just enough pathos and brief scripture references to justify it as a sermon.  I’ve always been leery of feigning the voice of Spaulding Gray or Garrison Keillor in the pulpit – but I think there was one preacher from the past who would have really mined this experience for some weighty nuggets of truth.

            Max Cleveland was the first preacher whose preaching I remember.  He was the preacher at the Ceredo (WV) Church of Christ when I was in elementary school.  He looked like Martin Van Buren (with shorter hair) and had a voice as big as Paul Harvey’s.  What I remember about him was how vivid he was. He did a sermon against smoking cigarettes one time and, holding a piece of chalk up he kept saying, “Why would you be a slave to something this small?” Once, using the same piece of chalk he said, “I’m going to draw a hypocrite.” Then he made one point on the chalk board and said “That’s just about the size of a hypocrite.”

            If Max were preaching that sermon, he would have pointed out how all us weary travelers had it better than most people in the world – we had heat, potable water, secure surroundings.  Think of the refugee camps around the world and those who are without clean water – think of the thousands in that very city who were cold, hungry, and afraid. Max would have preached that.

            Max would have told us to think about how we were all trying to get out of what we considered a hellish situation but most folks seem eager to run headlong into actual hell.  Max would have preached that, too.

            Finally, Max would have preached that unlike the flights out of Midway Airport – so uncertain, so easily cancelled, so dependent on the human factor –our salvation is sure. Unlike the travelers who have to keep checking the board to discover the status of their flight, we may know that we are saved.

            And he would have been right and Biblical on all counts.

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