Just a quick note on my trip over to Los Angeles and my time with the folks at Hope Chapel and Stand to Reason. I had a great time and we had a real nice group of folks show up for my presentation on the sufficiency of Scripture. I was a little surprised I was the first person to use PowerPoint, but especially since I had some lengthy quotes to provide at the end, I think it helped a lot. I really enjoyed getting to talk to folks before and after the presentation and during the break. A number mentioned being encouraged by the message, and I was encouraged as well, both by the turnout (I was competing against “24” for crying out loud!) and especially by the very serious young men with whom I spoke about the faith.
I managed to snag an earlier flight out of LAX Tuesday morning (I walked right into the security area without any line, which, given I stood in that line for 45 minutes back in November, was just amazing). I slept most of the way over, and was lightly snoozing as we prepared to land. We were lined up and about 500 feet up when the engines roared and we were all pushed back in our seats as we aborted the landing and headed back up. Talk about a rude awakening. As we began to circle around we were informed that the aircraft behind us in the landing pattern had declared an emergency with smoke in the cockpit, and hence we had to get out of their way so they could get down as fast as possible. And that we did. Always a reminder that as tremendously safe as travel is in the air, it still involves sealing yourself in a metal tube and hurtling through the frigid cold atmosphere at outrageous speeds. Things happen. Anyway, the other plane landed safely, and so did we.
