What can we learn from the Asiana flight crash?

We are now learning more about what may have caused last Saturday’s Asiana airplane crash at the San Francisco Airport.  But the thing that caught my attention, in particular, was this: the airplane was flying too low. Only a few days earlier, I had been reflecting on a spiritual principle: if you want to change your attitude, you must change your altitude; failure to do so may cause you to crash and burn. 

When our circumstances reach a critical point (we feel like we’re coming in for a bad landing), it is crucial that we see things as God does. He says, “For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts” (Is. 55:9). Is this not why Paul exhorts “set your mind on things above, not on earth” (Col. 3:2)?—more altitude?

David wished for the “wings like a dove that he could fly away and rest!” (Ps. 55:6). But you and I don’t have to wish—we have the wings of a dove, the Holy Spirit.  He is the One who will “make our feet like the feet of a deer, and cause us to stand on high places” (Ps. 18:33). I can almost hear Jesus saying, “You have heard it said that 'Attitude is everything'. But I say to you 'Altitude is everything'.”