Amazed

At 5pm on Sunday, viewing the white snowy ground below from my flight, I was thinking...

Wow.  Amazing.  God really can do ANYTHING.  

Here's a little background on this realization...

I was flying back from my ski trip to Breckenridge... having had a fantastic time with my buddy Owen and some new friends.  The snow was great.  We got a lot of it :-) and on Saturday it cleared up for a sunny day with plenty of powder on the mountain.  Below are a few pictures from this beautiful day.

A view of the town below from the Horseshoe Bowl

Ready to go down the steep hill

Like I said, it was a really fun trip... until Sunday morning.

Sunday was our travel day back home... I had planned to leave the condo around 10am Mountain Time and grab lunch in downtown Denver before catching my flight back to Atlanta before relaxing to a new day at work on Monday.  Sunday was promising to be a relaxing trip home.  

That is, until I got the call that woke me up.  Delta Airlines cancelled my flight home... and until I checked the weather report, I didn't realize why.  I got this message on my phone at 8am.  The entire East Coast was getting snow dumped on it... and Atlanta is really weak when it comes to snow... it shuts down everything, including almost every flight coming into Hartsfield Airport on Sunday, which included mine.  

Now, this message was an automated one, and I tried to reply to the Delta call-in line to only meet busy signals or just getting kicked out of the call.  It wasn't looking good.  Then I got through to a queue at Delta with the Skymiles reservations number (let's just say I can be creative in a "crisis")... only to get put on hold for more than 30 minutes.  As the rest of the guys in the cabin were waking up, they were wondering what the weird noise was... it was the "on hold" Muzak playing from my cell phone waiting to (hopefully) get connected.... the odds that I would get out of Colorado on Sunday was getting smaller, and smaller, and smaller.  

I was starting to have visions of being a cheap hotel refugee in Denver's Airportopolis while really needing to get back to Atlanta.  With every minute on hold with Delta, my hope of sleeping in my own bed and keeping my PTO day was waning.  

And then, I get on the line with the Delta rep at 9:30am Mountain Time... expecting to get my hotel reservation but aiming for the fences, I mentioned that I knew that there were flights from Vail to Atlanta, thinking that these flights would be cancelled too I figured I'd give it a shot.

Guess what?  "Oh, there is a flight leaving at 12:25pm from Vail... and it hasn't been cancelled or delayed.  I think I can get you on... can you make that?"   Three hours?  I knew it was doable and my only shot, so I asked them to book.  They did.  

That started the mad dash to get both myself and my travel mates packed, ready, and going to the new destination... on the way to Denver.  Because of cost and car seats, I had to add Owen as a driver so he could return the Prius, registered to me from Hertz, to Denver instead of me.  This also worked fine.  Then started the mad dash to the Vail Eagle County Regional Airport to catch a flight... in enough time to transfer the car and get Owen and Scott to Denver International to make their Frontier flight.  

45 minutes before my flight was to leave... we made it to EGE... never mind that none of us really knew how to get there or had good directions.  In the rush and drama, I finally boarded the flight 10 minutes before takeoff and was on my way to Atlanta.   

Owen and Scott had less than 4 hours to make it back to Denver, turn in the car, and make their flight... they made it to San Antonio as scheduled.  

As for me, knowing the drama of that Sunday morning and the low probability of ANY flight remaining scheduled to land in Atlanta, it was nothing short of astonishing that at 5pm I was staring at Clayton County covered in snow from 10,000 feet ready to descend on the runway and on my way home.  

This flight should not have happened.  It doesn't make sense.  

After the very bumpy ride down and later sitting on the runway in boredom texting, calling, and Facebook-walling friends from my Blackberry, I could not help but think about how God really can do ANYthING!  Seriously.  Ridiculous Atlanta weather that shut down every school district in the Metro Atlanta area save one didn't stop this one flight... one that took me over an hour to even get through to the airline to even request a seat on.  Wow... God can do anything - and HE did this for ME.  Wow.  

Given that so much news that's out there today is set up to induce fear and doubt... this reminded me that in all circumstances, no matter what, my Heavenly Father is watching out for me, cares for me (more than birds!), and delights in doing good to me.  How can I fear -or worry- when I know that the God that holds the entire world in His hands knows my name and cares for little ol' me's needs... and even acts on my behalf because he likes me.   HE can do ANYTHING!

Crazily enough, I am hosting in Upstreet on Sunday... and guess what the bottom line this week is.  You'll never guess.  

FDR once said that "All we have to fear is fear itself."  When we are certain of God's care for us... is there ultimately a good reason to be afraid? 

Hmmmmmmmmm