All Wright now….

The Wright Brother flew right through the smokescreen of impossibility. – Charles Kettering.

The above is a quote about Orville Wright and his brother Wilbur, pioneers of aviation, who are generally credited with inventing, building, and flying the world’s first successful airplane; the flight taking place in December 1903.

Orville was born on 19th August 1871. The son of a bishop in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ; Orville grew up in Richmond, Indiana & Dayton, Ohio.

After one of their father’s many trips speaking at churches around the USA, he brought back a toy helicopter for them to play with, and both Orville & his brother Wilbur recognised and acknowledged that playing with this toy influenced their work in aviation.

Their father’s small act of love for his sons had a great impact upon the whole world. When Orville Wright passed away in 1948 the turbojet engine for airplanes had been invented.

The Wrights opened up the skies to the whole human race.

Today missionary organisations make much use of airplanes to impact the world with the good news of Jesus. Organisations such as ‘Missionary Aviation Fellowship‘ or MAF for short, IAMA or the International Association of Missionary Aviation, and ‘Wings of Faith‘, to name a few.

It makes me think of how the rise of the Greek & Roman empires paved the way for the ease of the spread of the gospel. At the time of the ‘Acts of the Apostles’ most of the then known world communicated in Greek (as the main language of trade) and travelled along Roman built roads.

 God truly is wise and sovereign, and His great heart of love desires for “all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” Acts 17:30b-31. For “from one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. “For in him we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17:26-28.

It is amazing how God can take such small things, like the gift giving by the Wright brothers’ father, and change the world. After all He did feed over 5,000 people from just five loaves of barley bread and two fish.

What small act of kindness and love do you have in your hand that God can use to change the world?