Safe Landing?

There’s a Christian aphorism that goes something like: God doesn’t promise us a smooth flight, just a safe landing. I have issues with this notion; and it’s such a broadly open metaphor. Just when is this safe landing? At the end of the journey through our current dark forest? At the end of our life? At the beginning of our eternal afterlife? Part of what vexes me, I think, is that this phrase sounds so wise and wonderfully comforting, yet winds up not meaning much of anything. Like meringue and cotton candy, it seems so richly decadent and sweet at first, yet leaves nothing to sustain a body. It also bothers me because it’s so obviously untrue. Think Dietrich Bonhoeffer; the early Christian martyr, Stephen; the persecutions leading to death of Christians (and non-Christians, too) throughout today’s world—and this is scarcely even the tip of a ginormous iceberg. They're crashes, not landings; and they’re definitely far from “safe.”

Yet, still, our God knows each and every hair of each and every one of us. The “more excellent way” of God, is love. And, to be quite certain, if God didn’t absolutely desire to deal with us, we would have been dropped ages and ages ago.

Greater minds than mine have been unable to solve this seeming discrepancy: Our omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniloving God allows us to live such impotent, distant, and hate-riddled lives. “God’s ways our not our ways,” sure. But couldn’t they be, at least once in awhile, more “godly?” Then again, as Paul says, we won’t see things clearly until later on. At the moment, things remain muddled. And it surely often escapes us the myriad ways God does indeed sublimely intervene into our lives, softening its blows. Perhaps, what God promises us is actually a safe-er landing.