Guiding Pillars                                                                                   6/22/41

 

Scripture:  Exodus 13: 17-22.

 

Text:  Exodus 13: 21;  “And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night.”

 

(Drawn from Dwight C. Smith in Xn. Cent. Pul. 6-41)

 

Some years ago, there was a race by several aviators from California to Hawaii for a prize, and for the honor of making the first completed flight between California and Honolulu.  A number of fliers entered the race.  Some reached Hawaii.  Some were never heard from again despite the alert watchfulness of people all over the Islands.

 

Possibly several of those fliers should never have attempted the crossing.  Their planes may have been in poor condition for the strain.  They may have been insufficiently trained in navigation, which is even more important for an ocean flier than for a sailor.  Motors may have failed; directions may have been confused.

 

At any rate, lives were lost and no one ever knew how they ended.  I have often wondered whether or not one or more of these lost fliers may even have over-shot his goal.  When climbing the mountains on certain days, this has seemed to me entirely possible.

 

In the darkness of the early morning hours, I have more than once driven a party of friends up the 10,000-foot slope of Maui’s Mount Haleakala to see, from its summit, the sunrise.  On that trip, one often passes through a cloud line.  Once, we encountered a cloud line so dense that I could not see any of the winding mountain road, and one of the party had to get out and walk a little distance by the front of the car to make certain that we stayed on the road.  But when we reached the summit, the clouds were left below.  And presently we saw the sun rise most gloriously out of a limitless sea of clouds.  Only the mountain peaks were visible.  The rest of the island, and neighboring smaller islands many miles away, were covered with the slowly-drifting wavy mass.  And I thought more than once: “What if an aviator were flying high up here on a day like this, how could he, without the help of modern navigation, suspect that land, and not ocean, lay beneath the clouds?  Even this visible mountain peak, if seen from the blue distance, might seem just another cloud.”  It would be easy to lose all sense of location up there.

 

In recent years, improved planes, with radio equipment and trained navigators, as well as skilled pilots, have explored carefully the possible air routes of the South Pacific.  Many of these flights have been as successful as a routine passenger flight.  Some have been lost - how, we are not always sure.

 

Perhaps twelve hundred miles southwest of Honolulu lies a bit of sand and coral known a Kingman Reef.  It is a low land, rising only a few feet above high tide.  It stretches in the shape of a large crescent enclosing a fine, protected harbor.  It is too small to appear on any of the larger charts.  But because of its location and its natural protection it was selected as a refueling point for one of those pioneering flights, when routes were being charted to Australia and New Zealand.

 

Of course supply ships were sent out, before the flight could be attempted.  And of course one of the ships went to Kingman Reef with its aviation gasoline and other supplies.

 

Arriving on schedule and anchoring safely, the ship’s captain wirelessed Honolulu that all was well; the refueling crew was ready, and the weather was favorable.  The plane had already made the long hop from Golden Gate to Honolulu.

 

Now, with favorable weather reports, the crew took off to the southwest, headed for that tiny dot in the vastness.  With two-way radio connection the plane crew was able to keep in touch with the ship’s crew all of the way down.

 

The plane was already more than half the way down when fog began to drift in over the reef.  For a short distance above the water and coral, the air was clear, but the ceiling was much too low for safe flying.  The plane must maintain a much greater altitude, flying well above the drifting, cloudy mass.

 

The reef and the ship were tiny enough a dot on a clear day.  Hidden from the pilot by a foggy blanket, how could he possibly hope to find them?  Any slight miscalculation, and the plane would either miss the goal, or crash in landing.

 

The plane had already used enough of its fuel so that it was not safe to try to return to Honolulu.  What was to be done?

 

Fortunately, modern navigation helped tremendously.  The supply ship was sending out a radio beam which the pilot followed “like an acrobat walking a tight rope.”  The plane came on unerringly until the ship’s crew could, at length, hear the droning of its motors.  The pilot, unseen above the clouds, reported that all was well so far.  But how was he to know just where to aim when he started down through the foggy blindness for a landing?  A guess that might be nearly right would not be nearly right enough to avoid disaster.

 

The ship’s captain then used an old method of signaling.  Sending word to the pilot to keep circling, he sent orders to the engine room to build a heavy smudge in the fire box.  All drafts were closed, while the stokers deliberately over fired the furnace.  Then, when a great load of smoke had accumulated, the drafts were suddenly opened.  A great column of smoke rose above the ship, carried higher and higher by the forced draft of hot air rising from the stack below.  In a few moments it rose above the fleecy layers of fog where the pilot could see it.  Circling it, he could take bearings on it and calculate exactly where the ship lay beneath it.  Presently he was ready to dive down to the point from which the smoke must have come, and he drove the plane’s nose down.

 

After a few moments of total blindness in the fog he came into the clear air above the water with the few seconds to spare that enabled him to make a perfect landing on the harbor.  Almost by the time the propellers had stopped, the work of refueling had begun.

 

Now isn’t this a modern parable?  How incredible the whole thing would have been to my great-grandfather--and to yours!

 

Does this story suggest another tale of four thousand years ago when a weary and bewildered company walked across a trackless desert?  They despaired - these escaped Israelite slaves.  They were frequently so dismayed that they would have returned to the ruthless cruelty of the Egyptian slave-masters, to mean food and degraded “security.”  But they discovered that their plight was not so hopeless as they thought.  For “the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light; to go by day and night.”

 

Here is a very modern instance when a pillar of smoking cloud led modern men, over a path more desolate than the ancients ever dreamed, to safety.  There is an ancient story of pillars of cloud and fire which led ancient men by day and by night.

 

Perhaps both stories have significance for us.  They are vastly different in time and space.  The winged speed of the crew in the air bears scant resemblance to the slow, burdened, footsore toil of the migrant slaves.  Coal or oil smoke seems more real before our eyes than the distance-hidden pillars that led the ancients.

 

But look at similarities if you would make the stories a parable of your own.  (1)  Each journey involved many serious perils.  (2)  Each journey required steady courage and a genuine, practical faith.  (3) Each required leaving familiar scenes for a destination never seen before.  (4)  Each meant taking grave risks in confident trust that all would end well.  (5)  Each was an act of faith in the forces that lie beyond human control.  (6)  Each might have ended in disaster if it had not been for the pillar of cloud.

 

How could you better describe the whole life of any of us, or the short events of our lives?

 

A splendid Christian gentleman, brilliant preacher, excellent teacher, vigorous thinker, spent the closing years of his life in the city of Honolulu, far from his early home in Scotland, and from New York City, the center of his middle years of work.  He was Dr. G. A. Johnston-Ross, a minister of the Church of Scotland and a professor of Union Theological Seminary.  He spent his closing years at Honolulu, under the shadow of an illness which hung like sudden death over his consciousness, never knowing when the hour of his end might strike.  It often burdened him.

 

A younger minister, one of his earlier students, was visiting one week in his home.  As Mr. Talmage left the house one morning, Dr. Ross remarked, rather gloomily, “Well a good day to you.  I may not be here when you get back.”  With twinkling eye and sober face, Talmage instantly replied, “I know just how you feel!  I may not get back!  Perhaps I shall be struck dead by an automobile while I am crossing the street downtown.”

 

It was spoken half in jest, in the attempt to cheer up one who liked his cheer.  But it was spoken also in truth.  There is hardly a single act of our lives, whether commonplace or unusual, that is not an act of faith - faith in the other fellow, that he will drive on the right hand side of the road and stop at marked crossings, faith that the sun will rise as usual, and that the law of gravity can be depended upon for another day, faith that food will come through the elaborate system of exchange for our work, faith in a Providence that guides us through when we are covering ground that is new to us, where we may make serious mistakes and miscalculations if we are not guided.

 

We do not, and can not, escape the risks.  I have wandered on a mountainside, lost in fog with a dozen boys dependent on my experience for their guidance and safety on a trip they had never taken before.  My only recourse was to lead them on, up the slope, through the fog, until, after another hour of trudging I might find familiar trees, a ranch fence, a familiar path; or the skies might clear a bit.

 

A pilot must have to admit to himself, now and then, that he is lost, flying blind, with no alternative except to go on in the faith that the “pillar of cloud” will appear, the beam will be found, the clouds will part for a fleeting instant, and a safe landing can be found.

 

This faith does not mean that we may do as we please; far from it!  We must accept the disciplines and penalties of a life based on order.  If we can know all of its rules, and if we will to obey them, we have great freedom within the borders of the path.  If we break the rules, and simply stray with our passing fancy, we break our lives.  Every fact of physical existence and the moral order supports our Lord’s statement, “Straight is the way and narrow is the gate.”

 

We can live only where there is enough oxygen.  (Only 25,000 feet straight up there is not enough.)  We can live only as long as there is a relatively small change in temperature.  Only a slight change in the earth’s temperature would wipe out our physical existence.

 

Anger begets anger, and hatred, hatred.  Love responds to love.  If we would be guided by the pillars of cloud and fire, let us open our eyes and see the beacons that God has given us.

 

In bitterness, how sorely we are tempted to cry out - “Where is God now?”  Why, bless you, there He is, and here he is right before our eyes, going before us by day in a pillar of cloud to guide us, and by night in a pillar of fire to light the way!

 

 

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Dates and places delivered: 

 

            Wisconsin Rapids, June 22, 1941

            W.F.H.R., Wisconsin Rapids, September 18, 1941