In Flight Romance

If something happens high above the earth . . . does it really matter? After all if you are suspended in space and time, then why not suspend morality. You hear and experience stories about what people do and say in the air or in space. Take a trip, go somewhere exotic and become a different person.

She smiled warmly and sat down. Called her boyfriend, said "I love you. Good-bye." He sits down next to her in the middle seat. Cute young woman, unmarried and on her way to do five days of training. Strong tanned guy with wry smile, a captivating conversant and in television. She is a visitor. He is in his hometown. A three-hour in-flight conversation ensues. The five-day potential romance has only begun with this chat and an exchange of phone numbers. That phone call before the plane took off was placed by a different person long forgotten - or at least forgotten in flight.

~ ~ ~

A line of three young laughing women come down the aisle. He was sitting in her seat. The accident allows for a laugh and a start to a conversation. The aisle does little separate their conversation and obvious interest. She is the aggressor sharing lewd comments to go on T-shirts. He takes the bait. Three hours of drinking the $5 variety of "tiny wine" make the aisle seem more and more narrow. They lean across the aisle and exchange some unknown suggestive comments. Her response, "Well, I would like that, but my friends here are fairly Christian."

~ ~ ~

If it happens in the air, then is it an affair of any significance? Or are the words and the actions those of a different person? The names may be forgotten in a blur of faces that cannot be erased.

Is it possible to become a different person for a time and then after a round-trip landing resume your identity? People do it all the time. Or does one upon landing become forever a different person? A person who might be even "fairly Christian." If we cannot forget, and our beloved is none the wiser, then maybe God has forgotten.

But maybe, just maybe God has in mind a different kind of Christian who is the same in the air as they are here on the ground.