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Finding God in the night
sky above the Atlantic Ocean
by Buddy
Hamilton’s story, as told to Richie Hilbert, and then written by her at his
request.
Prior to December 16, 1942, I possessed a faith in God, but
my God was way too small. As a 26 year old pilot for TWA, my view was about
to be enlarged, and what better place to commence grasping a more complete
picture of the power, presence, and pervasiveness of God’s creative work
that in the heavenly skies themselves.
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In August of 1942, I went to work for TWA as a Second
Officer, the lowest ranking position among pilots. During WWII the
military contracted with civilian airlines to assist in a program
called “Contract Carrier Division of the Air Transport Command.”
TWA assigned me to one of those missions as the third pilot. This
was my first experience on an airliner of any kind.
One of the legs my crew staffed flew from Natal, Brazil to
Accra on the Gold Coast of Africa, via Ascension Island, a tiny 35
square mile strip of land in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, on
which we were to refuel. Among our group was a navigator from the
Merchant Marines Service, whose job was to supervise navigation of
the entire flight.
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…I possessed a faith in
God, but my God was way to small. |
On December 16, sitting in the right seat of our DC-4’s
cockpit, I was appointed to assist the navigator in charting our course.
Essential to our task was an instrument called a chronometer. It was a very
delicate instrument and easily affected by outside influences. It had to be
kept away from vibrations, working best when horizontal, and was therefore
kept in a box that maintained such a position. The navigator was about 6’-8’
away from me, which did present a problem for the two of us to communicate
at just the right moments. Because of this, he chose to remove the
chronometer from the box in which it safely rested, give it to me, and
instruct, “When I say ‘Mark,’ give me the exact time.”
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With a bit of angst and a lot of determination, I was
focused on that chronometer as I had never focused before. At the
navigator’s shout of, “Mark,” I successfully provided him the time.
But what happened next was not scripted. Having just completed the
first of what was to be more assignments, I watched in horror as
that chronometer slipped from my hands, landed on the pedestal which
housed four operational levers per each of four engines (that would
be 16 levers!), trickled through all those levers, and finally hit
the floor. The navigator witnessed his instrument bouncing back and
forth among the levers, knowing that it would be rendered useless to
us. In spite of the fact that he did end up having enough
information to do what he had to do, he was furious. When I
exhibited confusion over why he was so upset, he explained in detail
such things as follow:
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Each celestial body has a position called a zenith which is
90 degrees to the plane of the earth, and the required
measurements are based in part on this.
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The time as read from the chronometer needs to be totally
precise because each celestial body in the solar system changes
position every second of every day as it rotates and follows its
orbit.
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This planet earth turns on its axis at a rate of 1000 mph.
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I was in awe. I had for years believed in God as the Great
Creator, in Jesus as His Son, and that I would go to heaven because of Him.
But this new information initiated in me an awakening - a fresh, expanded
way of looking at things. It led me to see the intricacy, dynamic quality,
and even precariousness of our universe. Realizing that everything in it is
constantly moving, while physically being held together by the force of
gravity alone, I suspected that only with God’s continued creativity and
intervention could it even continue to exist. An extension of this for me
has been the belief that what gravity is to our physical world, Jesus is to
our spiritual world. He holds together the threads of our lives, offering
sense, order, and hope to all that we face.
Today, at this point
in my spiritual growth, I find it highly plausible that creation as a belief
and evolution as a science might be compatible. Evolution could indeed have
been created by God as a tool to bring this planet to its present state, and
given to us mortals in the same way He has given us chemistry or physics.
Starting that day in the sky, I have confidence in this: The universe is
arranged with such precision and is in such delicate balance that it can
only be divinely intentional, divinely executed, divinely progressive, and
divinely controlled. Consistent with this is the humbling conviction that
the same is true for my own life. I see myself as created for God’s
purposes, and I choose to be dependent on His guidance. He is an amazing
God. How typical it is of our Lord to have used a mundane set of
circumstances, my passion for flying, people nearest me at the time, and
even my failure to perform my task as I would have liked, to draw me to
Himself. He may be doing the same for others. Here I am in my twilight
years, loving God and wanting to share Him. May He use my story in any way
He sees fit to bring us all closer to His side.
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