On May 25, 1979, I was on a school bus for a 5th-grade field trip. We had spent the day at the Shedd Aquarium on Chicago’s lakefront and we were on our way back to school. As our bus lumbered through the tollbooths and lanes of traffic, we were suddenly surrounded by lights and sirens in all directions as emergency vehicles flew past us toward O’Hare Airport, one of the busiest travel hubs in the world. When we got closer to the airport, we could see a large column of black and gray smoke rising over the terminal. Later, I would find out that a DC-10 aircraft had crashed during takeoff and all 271 people on board were lost.
One person who wasn’t on American Flight 191 that day was Denis Waitley. Just a few minutes before the ill-fated takeoff, Waitley had missed his flight. After running like a madman from one end of the airport to the other, he had missed the boarding process and the jetway door was closed. As he stood at the gate, pleading with the woman behind the counter, the plane backed away from the gate. Denis was filling out a complaint form and rebooking a new flight when the plane he should have been on crashed.
Denis Waitley realized his life had been spared because he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. Waitley never rebooked that flight. He kept his original ticket and hung it in a prominent place in his office so he could see it often and be reminded of the gift that he had been given – a second chance at life.
You may have had a close call like that in your life. A near-collision in rush hour traffic that shook you up. A diagnosis that seemed like a death sentence until you recovered.
Many people who have received a second chance at life say they will never forget it and that they live their lives differently because they see each day as a gift. Maybe that’s why people connect with Tim McGraw’s song, “Live Like You Were Dyin’.”
While most of us have not had the wake-up call that Denis Waitley had, all of us can share his perspective. Waitley wanted to make sure he never forgot the gift of life and how he had been spared from Flight 191. In the same way, if you are a Christian, you have been given a second chance at life.
When we think about what God did in sending Jesus into this world, and what Christ did through his suffering on the cross, we sometimes miss the point. We talk about salvation like Jesus came to turn bad people into good people. But that’s not what the Bible teaches us. Jesus didn’t come to turn us from bad to good. He came to change us from dead to alive.
In his letter to the church in Ephesus (located in modern-day Turkey), the Apostle Paul writes:
“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins,… But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.” (Ephesians 2:1,4-5)
That means every person who has trusted in Christ and been reconciled to God through Him, has been given the same second chance at life that Denis Waitley had. We have been given new life in Christ. We haven’t just been made good, we’ve been made alive. We’re not just cleaned up, we are resurrected! So, how do we make sure we don’t forget or take this new life for granted? Wailey kept his boarding pass to remind him of that moment. We too have something to remind us of our second chance at life. The cross of Christ.
In 1707, Isaac Watts published one of the most well-known hymns in history. The song is “When I Survey the Wonderous Cross,” and the first verse goes like this:
When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of Glory died
My richest gain I count but loss
And pour contempt on all my pride
When I survey (look at) the cross, I am reminded about the new life I have been given. It’s a reminder that it is only by the grace of God that I can experience this new life, and it’s a challenge to live my life with purpose and meaning.
In the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, James Ryan is in a cemetery, looking at the gravestones of the men who sacrificed their lives to rescue him and get him back home. He is visibly moved, knowing that he was given a second chance at life because of what they had done. Through his tears and trembling, he implores his family, “Tell me I’ve lived a good life. Tell me I’m a good man.” Ryan wants to know that he has lived life well in honor of his fallen comrades. May we also live our lives with purpose as we look to the cross and experience new life in Christ.