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Hendersonville Seventh-day Adventist Church, NC

David Wright

Battling with the Storm

Well, it was January 15, 2009, just 9 years ago that US Airway flight 1549 took off from New York City's LaGuardia Airport en route to Charlotte, North Carolina.

I took off from runway number 4 at 324 in the afternoon.

The crew made its first report after becoming airborne at 325 as being at 700 feet and climbing.

There was a good 10 miles of visibility with broken clouds and at 3.26 Solenberger remarked to Skiles, what a view of the Hudson today.

Literally 37 seconds later the plane struck a flock of Canadian geese at an altitude of only 2, 818 feet, 4.5 miles northwest of LaGuardia.

The pilot's view was filled with the large birds.

The passengers and crew heard very large bangs and saw flames from the engine followed by silence and an odor of fuel.

Realizing that both engines had shut down, Sullenberger, also known as Sully, took control, while Skiles worked to checklist for engine restart.

The aircraft slowed but continued to climb for a further 19 seconds, reaching about 3, 000 feet at an airspeed of about 185 knots, and then began a glide descent, accelerating to 210 knots as it went downward.

At 327, Soli radioed a Mayday call to New York terminal radar approaching control.

Air traffic controller told LaGuardia's tower to hold all departures and directed Soli back to runway 13.

Soli said, to have 0 thrust coming from those engines was shocking.

Soley asked if they could attempt to land in New Jersey, mentioning T-Tier Bureau Airport, I believe.

Controllers obtained permission, but solely then responded right behind that, we can't do it, we're going into the Hudson.

In fact, you can go online, there's a whole simulation.

In fact, this is a picture from that simulation, and they have the recordings to back and the forth.

The aircraft passed less than 900 feet above the George Washington Bridge.

You see a map there, a little bit of the course of this plane, but it had very little time to respond.

Sully commanded over the cabin address system, brace for impact.

And the flight attendants relayed the command to passengers.

Meanwhile, air traffic controller asked the Coast Guard to caution vessels in the Hudson and asked them to prepare to assist in the rescue.

About 19 seconds later, at 3.31, the plane made an unpowered ditching.

Flight attendants compared the ditching to a hard landing with 1 impact, no bounce, then a gradual deceleration.

The ebb tide then began to take the plane southward.

Soli opened the cockpit door and ordered the evacuation.

The crew began evacuating passengers through the 4 overwing window exits and into the inflatable slide raft deployed from the front right passenger door.

A panicked passenger opened a rear door, which a flight attendant was unable to reseal.

Water was also entering in the hole of the fuselage and through cargo doors that had come open.

So as the water rose, the attendants urged passengers to move forward by climbing over the seats, which included 1 passenger that was in a wheelchair.

Finally, Sully walked the cabin twice to confirm that it was empty.

And the air temperature that day in January?

That means a little more to you this week than past weeks, doesn't it?

Some evacuees waited for rescue knee deep in water on a partially submerged slides.

Or some, fearing an explosion, swam away from the plane.

But remarkably, all 155 passengers and 5 crew survived.

After some investigation, they said that Sully had made the right decision and he was praised for saving the lives of all on board.

An NTSB board member called the ditching the most successful in aviation history.

Then President George Bush called him, as well as President-elect Barack Obama.

A few weeks later, the crew received a standing ovation at the Super Bowl in February.

You can see the plane today in the Carolina's Aviation Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Soli was noted for his poise and his calm during the crisis.

In fact, you can hear it if you listen to it.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg dubbed him Captain Cool.

Nonetheless, Soley suffered symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in subsequent weeks including sleeplessness and flashbacks.

He said that the moments before the ditching were the worst, sickening, pit of your stomach, falling through the floor feeling that he had ever experienced.

As a flight instructor for single and dual-engine planes and gliders, at the time of this incident he had 42 years and 20, 000 hours of experience.

Sully said this, 1 way of looking at this might be that for 42 years I've been making small regular deposits into this bank of experience, education and training.

And on January 15, The balance was sufficient that I could make a very large withdrawal.

This is my chance to panic and I'm panicking!

Where do you make deposits day after day?

Today I want to talk a little bit about this idea of being calm in the midst of a storm by being cool, keeping your cool, not let anything ruffle you, fluster you, or cause you to go into some kind of a panic or tailspin, but to keep your head about you and to think calmly and rationally, how am I going to deal with this situation?

And I want to look at this this morning not just from a secular point of view, but from a spiritual point of view.

What does it say about me when I become anxious and stressed and uptight?

If you brought your Bibles, and I hope you did, I invite you to turn with me to a story in the book of Matthew.

We're really getting to Matthew verse 23, but I'm going to start in verse 18 to give us a little more context.

We're in Matthew chapter 8, beginning in verse 18.

There we read in Matthew chapter 8, verse 18, and when Jesus saw great multitudes about him, he gave a command to depart to the other side.

Then a certain scribe came and said to him teacher.

I will follow you wherever you go Now if we back up even further than this Jesus has been preaching.

And so he says it's time for us to depart.

Let's cross the water here and before that happens there's just 1 more and yet another.

And so somebody comes and says, teacher I will follow you wherever you go.

And Verse 20, Jesus said to him, foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

Are you sure you want to follow me wherever I go?

And another of his disciples said to him, Lord, let me first go and bury my father.

But she said to him, follow me and let the dead bury their own dead.

And so it's in that context that we get here to verse 23, now when he got into a boat his disciples followed him.

Now it says his disciples but we have to take into account the fact that the 12 haven't been listed yet.

In fact that doesn't come until chapter 10 verse 2.

And in chapter 9 he's still calling Matthew the tax collector.

And so this is the disciples in the larger generic sense.

And yes, the 12 were probably there, or most of them were probably there, but this is a larger group.

In fact in Mark's account it talks about other boats that are accompanying the boat that Jesus is in.

And so that is the group that we're talking about when it says his disciples followed him.

And then in verse 24, and suddenly a great tempest arose on the sea, so the boat was covered with the waves.

Now the word there for tempest is an interesting word.

It's seismos in the Greek, which literally means earthquake.

A term Matthew uses 3 other times to describe apocalyptic upheavals.

It's the same word he uses in Matthew 24 as 1 of those signs of the end of earthquakes as part of that.

And so this seems to be no ordinary storm but 1 in which perhaps Satan is attacking if you will.

The boat is in danger of being swamped, lives are at risk as we'll see as we continue reading.

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Battling with the Storm

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