Daily devotion from Pastor Chris

They said it couldn’t be done. Ten people had died trying to make the 2400 mile journey from Hawaii to California by air. On January 11, 1935, Amelia Earhart settled into the cockpit of her plane to attempt what no man or woman had been able to accomplish. In Honolulu, where she was going to begin her journey, the weather was poor.

Amelia was born thirty eight years before in Atchison, Kansas in the home of her maternal grandfather; a former federal judge who had become the president of the Atchison Savings Bank and a leading citizen in the community. Her life was marked by a sense of adventure early on. As a seven year old, and with the help of her uncle, she built a ramp modeled on a roller-coaster she had seen, and then fastened it to the roof of the family’s toolshed. Moments later, she emerged from the broken box that had served as her sled with a bruised lip, torn dress and a sense of exhilaration. “Oh Pidge,” she said to her sister, “it’s just like flying!”

It took another thirteen years, however, until Earhart had her first flight. On December 28, 1920, she visited an airfield in Long Beach, California, and her dad shelled out $10 for a ten minute flight with a man named Frank Hawks. The experience changed her life. "By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground," she later said, "I knew I had to fly."

And so began the journey that fifteen years later would lead Amelia Earhart to an airfield in Honolulu, preparing for a flight that no one had ever successfully completed. An open letter begged her not to try. Others had died trying. Many believed it couldn’t be done. Amelia was undeterred, and eighteen hours later she landed in Oakland where thousands swarmed her plane in celebration of the extraordinary feat. Eighty-three years later my grand-daughter would be named after her.

“It can’t be done.” Sometimes we are tempted to listen to the naysayers. Sometimes the challenges before us seem insurmountable – a diagnosis of cancer, a difficult exam, a relationship that has deteriorated to the point of appearing irreconcilable. People told Amelia Earhart she couldn't fly from Honolulu to California, but she believed she had the resources to accomplish it. We have something even better. We serve a God for whom the word “impossible” simply doesn’t exist.

“Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Eph. 3:20-21)