Sunday's Sermon, Flight 90 and Arland Williams

I talked a moment about Arland Williams who sacrficed his life in 1982 to rescue other passengers from the crash of flight 90. One of those rescued was a flight attendant. A friend from EverGreen emailed me the rest of the story.

"She was rescued twice. Two times, two complete strangers made a decision to rescue her, within two days of each other. Not bad, huh? Her name was Kelly Moore which means absolutely nothing to you. You don’t know Kelly Moore but most of you know some of the circumstances about the day that she was rescued, at least the first time. You see Kelly Moore was a flight attendant for Air Florida. The plane she flew on was a Boeing 737. Specifically it was Air Florida Flight 90. On January 13 1982 Kelly Moore began her day just as she always had, never suspecting what the day had in store for her. Two minutes after take off flight 90 began losing altitude and crashed into a Bridge spanning the Potomac River. When Kelly came to she was in the frigid waters of the Potomac clinging to a piece of wreckage with five other survivors.

Remember the story yet?

One of the survivors clinging to that raft helped Kelly and the other four into the rescue harness of a hovering helicopter one by one before succumbing to hypothermia and slipping beneath the surface. And so that was how she was rescued the first time, by a stranger she had never met, who was later identified as Arland Williams.

Two days later Kelly was rescued again, listen to her words. A couple of days later, when I was moved from intensive care to a regular room, I woke to see a nurse standing over me. She smiled, covering my fingers with her warm, gentle hand, and said, "Little girl, I could get in big trouble for telling you this, but God loves you and he saved you from that plane crash for a reason." In response to my eager interest, my nurse risked her job to tell me of Jesus’ love for me. As she spoke of how he died for me, I responded by turning my life over to him. For the first time I felt real peace.

When I prayed to accept Christ, I asked God to show me how I could know more about him. I knew he would answer me.

Not only that but it was by two separate strangers in a course of two days. Why? What qualities did Williams share with other heroes whose stories we read about in the newspapers, you know the ones who save babies from burning buildings, rescue motorists in mangled cars, and plunge into freezing water to save struggling swimmers? Well they are all ordinary people who came to a critical turning point and made an extraordinary decision to rescue someone whose life was in danger. And more often then not they put themselves in peril doing it. Listen again to what Kelly Moore said:

I don’t know why God saved me from the Potomac that day when others died, or why he answered my desperate prayers for contact with him. But I do know God used compassionate, ordinary people to bring his love to me "