But this was after two planes had already hit the World Trade Center, and the passengers on United 93 — huddled in the back of the plane — were beginning to find out what the real plan was. Beginning at 9:30 a.m., several passengers made phone calls to their loved ones.
"Tom, they are hijacking planes all up and down the east coast," Deena Burnett told her husband Tom, a passenger on United 93, in a cell phone call at 9:34 a.m. "They are taking them and hitting designated targets. They've already hit both towers of the World Trade Center." In another phone call, Tom learned from his wife that another plane had hit the Pentagon.
"We have to do something," Burnett told his wife at 9:45 a.m. "I'm putting a plan together." Other passengers, including Mark Bingham, Jeremy Glick, and Todd Beamer, were learning similar details in their own phone calls, as the plane was barreling towards Washington, DC.
The passengers voted on whether to fight back against the hijackers. Led by the four man group, the passengers then rushed the cockpit, with Beamer rallying them in his last words: "You ready? Okay, let's roll."”
So, a pastor and a homosexual man united a group of passengers to retake the plane. Interesting isn’t it? When we stop fighting each other, and unite together, we can do great things. All 44 passengers lost their lives that day. That was the end of their journey. But they did something special by stopping a terrorist hijacked plane that was headed for the united states capitol.
And today, we’re talking about the end of the journey. We’ve gone through our spiritual journey series, and eventually, yes, the journey does come to an end, at least, in this world.
The heroes journey which we’ve been examining breaks the journey into three parts, departure, initiation, and return. Today we go through the various subjects of the 3rd part, the return.
We’ve gone through the road of trials, the union with the lover, the temptation, atonement with the father, apotheosis, and the ultimate blessing. Now, the return home from the journey.
Refusal of the Return – we don’t want to return to our old life or our old ways. We embrace the new calling, as part of the body of Christ, in the army of God. We never return to the old ways.
Rescue from Without – We continue to face our battles in the Christian life, and more and more we continue to realize God swoops in and rescues us, time and again, to do in us what we can’t do ourselves.
The Magic Flight – Time and again we find ourselves in the magic flight, under attack and in persecution as Christians, and time and again, God delivers us on the magic carpet, the flight at night, among the stars, and we rest, realizing God is doing it in us,.
Master of the Two Worlds – We come to the point where we’ve mastered both worlds. You might call this “entire sanctification” we come to the point where we truly have come to understand the spiritual realm. And we’ve learned to apply the spiritual truths of the Bible to the real world. So our life in this world is fully transformed. Thus we are master of two worlds, the spiritual realm in prayer and time with God, and the physical world, how we live as Christians in this gritty real world.
Freedom to Live – Then we come to the Freedom to live. Having come to master the two worlds, we have the knowledge we need, so we learn to share the message of Christ with the world. We share with people we mentor, we share it with strangers and friends, and we become teachers, when we used to be only learners. Now we are teachers of the truth.
Crossing of the Return Threshold – Eventually, as we grow old, we come to the end of the journey, and we die. We pass on to the next world. That is the true conclusion of the journey.
Ecclesiastes 12:1-7 (ERV)12 Remember your Creator while you are young, before the bad times come—before the years come when you say, “I have wasted my life.” 2 Remember your Creator while you are young, before the time comes when the sun and the moon and the stars become dark to you—before problems come again and again like one storm after another.
3 At that time your arms will lose their strength. Your legs will become weak and bent. Your teeth will fall out, and you will not be able to chew your food. Your eyes will not see clearly. 4 You will become hard of hearing. You will not hear the noise in the streets. Even the stone grinding your grain will seem quiet to you. You will not be able to hear the women singing. But even the sound of a bird singing will wake you early in the morning because you will not be able to sleep.
5 You will be afraid of high places. You will be afraid of tripping over every small thing in your path. Your hair will become white like the flowers on an almond tree. You will drag yourself along like a grasshopper when you walk. You will lose your desire,[b] and then you will go to your eternal home. The mourners will gather in the streets as they carry your body to the grave.
Remember your Creator while you are young, before the silver rope snaps and the golden bowl is crushed like a jar broken at the well, like a stone cover on a well that breaks and falls in. Your body came from the earth. And when you die, it will return to the earth. But your spirit came from God, and when you die, it will return to him.
