The Miracle On Flight 255

The Miracle on Flight 255

The pilots were in a hurry to take off that Sunday evening. If they didn’t clear the runway quickly, they wouldn’t beat the noise curfew at their destination in Phoenix. So the McDonnell Douglas rumbled down the runway despite the fact that the pilots hadn’t gone through their taxi checklist. Had they done so, they might have discovered that they didn’t have electrical power to the aircraft takeoff system. They also would have known that the slats and flaps of their airliner were not extended enough.

As flight 255 lifted off the Detroit runway, the jet began to rock laterally. It struck a light pole, severing eighteen feet off its left wing and igniting stored fuel. The right wing was seared off as it ripped through a car rental building. Rolling crazily out of control, the jetliner careened through traffic and slammed into an overpass on Interstate 94. It then exploded into a fireball, scattering its charred remains across several miles.

It was one of the worst tragedies in airline history. One hundred fifty-four passengers and crew members perished, as well as two motorists on the highway. Only a handful of airline crashes have killed more children and wiped out more entire families than flight 255.

The Detroit medical examiner was one of the first people on the scene. He shook his head and declared that it was impossible that anyone could have survived. As rescuers combed through the burned corpses in the eerie darkness, it seemed that his initial assessment was correct.

Then someone heard a child’s faint whimper. Miraculously, four-year-old Cecelia Cichan was huddled under the charred body of her mother, next to the remains of her father and brother. The little girl was critically injured and bearing scars that she will carry for the rest of her life, but she was alive!

After the rescuers pulled the child from the wreckage, the medical examiner closely studied the position of the bodies. He concluded that in the terrifying seconds prior to impact, somehow Cecelia’s mother managed to wrap herself around her little girl. Her body not only cushioned the impact but also took the full fury of the fireball that roared through the disintegrating cabin.

Cecelia’s mother’s act of love gives us a glimpse of what Jesus did on the cross. Our world careens out of control like Northwest flight 255. Like those reckless pilots, humankind has repeatedly violated the safety rules laid out by our loving Creator. As a result, the flames of destruction race toward us. But Jesus wraps himself around God’s children. On the cross, he takes the full fireball of hell. Like little Cecelia, we emerge from life’s wreckage wounded and scarred. But we have a second chance at eternal life because Jesus shielded us from destruction.

Thirty years later, Cecelia is a wife and mom herself. Every day she thanks God for a mother who was willing to wrap herself around her daughter. Have you allowed Jesus to wrap himself around you? If he has, are you content to remain in the only shelter that will stand up to the firestorms of life?

If Jesus is your refuge, you no longer have to search for other shelter.

[Jesus said,] “How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.”

Matthew 23:37, NIV