Jesus: the Ace of all Aces

So around the airport that I work at, there is a strange breed of man. For those who hang around whether to work or fly, aviation is no small obsession. The people live, breath, sleep, and eat all things aviation. They put stickers on their cars that say, "I love the smell of Jet A in the morning." I say, "that's because it's not on your hands and soaked into your shoes." Because I am not as emotionally invested in aviation as the rest, the extent of my aviation knowledge is pretty limited. Nevertheless, I learn something new pretty much every day I work. In the past two week a bird has flown in that strikes the most peculiar of responses from grown men. They almost pee themselves in excitement and crowds flock to examine it. The plane is called a P51 Mustang. I think I'm rather privileged to have seen and fueled two in a mere two weeks, because there are guys who have been hanging around for years who have never seen one in person. As the one pictured below flew over midfield yesterday morning, the director of maintenance literally bounced up and down and said "ooh oh, please land here!" *note the peculiar behavior." This plane is the Eleanor (Gone in 60 Seconds) of aircraft. They are not quite as rare as Eleanor but are just as admired and coveted. This particular Mustang was assembled in 1947 and is priced at approximately 2 million. You could get a private Beech Jet for less. There are so few remaining (a few hundred) because the pilots who can afford one simply don't have time to get the experience they need to handle it. Unfortunately, they end up killing themselves with it.

So, as I fueled the plane I noticed something that struck me. The eight Nazi decals posted on the side of the fuselage. (pictured below) I thought this was an American bird? Then someone told me that the stickers represented confirmed Nazi kills. Five kills designated a fighter pilot as an "Ace", so the cat that took care of some Nazis was a bad mama jama. The current pilot explained that the kills didn't belong to this particular airframe but that the paint scheme is modeled after a plane that did indeed shoot down eight Nazi aircraft.


A habit that Jesus is drawing me into, is to be able to recognize the Gospel in all of my life circumstances. So the Spirit prompted me to ponder on these eight decals, these eight little symbols that hold so much rhetorical meaning...these kills which are historical victories over an evil force. My initial thought was how could a believer swag out to show his victories over evils in his life? We could rock a chain with medallions: The "better" we live the bigger the medallions. Hopefully you see how ridiculous this notion is. This is merely the idolatry of morality. This goes to show you the extent of my depravity. *There is no telling where an ADHD tangent will end up.* This reminds me of James and John bickering over where their cheeks will land in Heaven. Everything has a thread of, or inklings of, or the potential for...redemption. All of history renders this truth. It's what theologians call Redemptive History; the drama of God redeeming men and women from death and sin. All angles of history fall under this history including WWII history and thus have remnants of redemption. So all of these instances when the oppressed are freed and the raped are cherished and the forgotten are restored are marks of victory...kills, if you will. They all point to and find their source in a greater Redemption: Calvary. God seems to humor himself in paradoxes. For believers, our victories are when...ready for this?...we lose ourselves and can only credit life (marked in joy and suffering) to the maker of it, Jesus. Jesus is the Ace of all Aces, forever glorying in this: "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor 5:21). As believers, Jesus is the victory, and the Bible teaches that the Spirit is our seal of the kill. *If you like the idea of the Nazi decals on the Mustang, and you are a little edgy, go for a tattoo!* And in all seriousness, when you are stuntin' on life, Jesus is the victory, and when you are suffocating in pain and numbness, Jesus is the victory.