Cathay Cargo made the news again with their help in partnering with Billy Graham’s son Franklin and Samaritan’s Purse to deliver donations from Charlotte, North Carolina to Chengdu, China. Cathay did the same thing last year with the same organizations to send aid to China after a terrible earthquake.

It’s great to see my employer helping out in giving aid to other nations and partnering with Faith-based organizations.

Because I’ve taken a new job with Cathay Pacific, I am based out of New York and my flights start and end there. Therefore, I have to commute to New York because I live in Ohio. Commuting is not very cheap for me because I lose a lot of the benefits of free travel that most pilots have because they are employed by a U.S. carrier. U.S. carriers allow pilots of other U.S. carriers to ride for free if there is an open seat, to help them get to work if they don’t live where they are based. I can sometimes get a free ride, on certain airlines and certain situations, but otherwise, I’m on the lookout for cheap airline tickets to JFK. It’s all part of doing business in the airline world.

This last trip I flew, I got a free ride to NYC, but had three bills to pay: one for a bus ride, one for a hotel room, and one for a taxi to take me back to the airport to get home. Those three costs added up to a fairly large sum and even though I could absorb the cost, I wasn’t happy at the prospect of having to pay this all the time, every time I go to work.

But God is a great provider. He kept the children of Israel alive as they wandered in the desert, by providing food for them each day. He allowed food to appear each day, and it would only keep for one day. Those who tried to gather more and stock up for the next day would only find that extra food spoiled. God wanted them to trust him for daily needs on a daily basis. He is a lamp unto our feet, not a huge spotlight shining ahead to show us the next few miles, but only the next few steps.

So how is God a great provider to me? When I checked into the hotel here in Anchorage, I was given an envelope with per diem in it. When I opened it, it was for the exact amount of my three bills: hotel, bus, and cab ride! Not a penny more or less. I think situations like this are more than a coincidence and am excited that God is showing me that he is sufficient for my needs. He may not always provide monetary needs, but he will always provide for those who choose to trust in him.

I’ll finish with this great quote: “God may not always show up when I want him to, but he always shows up on time.”

I just got back from Dubai, on a trip that went through Bangkok, Mumbai, on to Dubai, and back again. Click the picture above to see some photos I took during my time in Dubai. That trip is always so tough on the body because we fly on the back side of the clock. For example, we left Dubai at 10:30 PM in Dubai, but our bodies felt like it was 3:30 AM, the time it is in Hong Kong when the clocks in Dubai say 10:30. Ideally, I would get eight hours of sleep prior to flying back to Hong Kong, but trying to go to bed at 11:00 AM and stay asleep for seven to eight hours is almost impossible. What ends up happening is that I’m awake during the day and then have to fly all night as well. So what do I do? I just fight through the fatigue, knowing that I’ll have a few days to recover once back in Hong Kong.

Because my body time was messed up, I had the nice opportunity to be up and awake for the sunrise. A true view to a sunrise can’t begin while there is already light in the sky — it has to start when everything is still completely dark. True magic happens in the few minutes between the first lightening of the sky and when the sun first peeps over the farthest edge of the earth. The sky has an infinite number of color shades from deep blue at the zenith of the sky, to a deep golden orange at the horizon. Seeing the sun come up is great, but once it appears, it washes out so many of the deep colors in the sky due to its brilliance.

My view from the 26th floor of the Shangri La Hotel Dubai was great because the windows in the room angle out at 45 degree angles to form a little place to sit and have about a 200 degree view of the city. I sat there in a few nice quiet moments, enjoying the sunrise, thinking about my wife, whom I haven’t seen in weeks and is so far away, and being encouraged by reading God’s Word.

It’s always nice to be reading the Bible while simultaneously witnessing something of a miracle of beauty in His Creation. I guess it helps me to stand in more awe of Him. In my case, it was just the simple, quiet sunrise. I think of how the astronauts of Apollo 8 read from the Bible when they saw the first “Earth Rise” on that Christmas Eve in ’68. “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth . . .” In moments like that, what more can we do than quote the Creator?

By the way, it was Bill Anders who took, in my opinion, one of the most amazing photographs of all time. With one click, he showed just how fragile and yet how important humanity is, sitting on a small blue planet, out in the vastness of space. A picture of a far off galaxy is one thing, but seeing our own home, and putting it into perspective, is nothing short of miraculous.

Dubai has some amazing creators. The Burj, the tallest building in the world, is in several of my pictures. It will stand nearly 2,700 feet tall upon completion and is a sight to behold in person. It looks puny in the pictures — until one starts getting within a mile or so. Then, the magnitude of the structure starts to take full affect. On our approach charts for the arrival into OMDB (Dubai’s airport), the minimum safe altitude, or MSA, has been raised to 3,800 feet. The MSA has to guarantee 1,000 feet of clearance over any obstacle. It’s wild to see that high of an MSA in a flat desert, all because of one amazing building!

However, my pictures of the Burj pale in comparison to the EarthRise shot. It just goes to show that we humans are capable of remarkable things, but nothing beats the true Creator! It’s that same Creator who looks after my Sweet Pea while I am away for so long. It’s He that guides me through my tough training at Cathay and it’s He who brings matchless peace in a busy, stressful world. Sometimes, it’s just the simple things, like watching a sunrise, that remind me of who God is and what He wants to do for me and through me.  I need to allow the true Creator to create in me the type of person that he wants me to be.

In the past week, I’ve been on several trips which have taken me to Singapore, Taipei, Bangkok, Mumbai (Bombay), Dubai, and back again. For someone who’s dream it has been to fly since they were three years old, I must say that this has to rank right up there near the top of weeks in my life.

I have to add that I am currently caught up in the moment of things. I’ve passed a lot of stressful training and still have much more stressful training ahead of me. Because of all the stress and preparation, when I have some down time and have the opportunity to reflect back on what has just occurred — I just flew a 747 from Dubai back to Hong Kong via Mumbai, I get pretty giddy. But, as neat as that is to me, and as much as I try and savor the moments, I also put them into perspective.

For example, as great as that week was, it pales in comparison to the weeks of my marriage and honeymoon, or the week I proposed, or some of the family times together around the holidays, or during times when I’ve been completely dependent upon my Savior and He has come through for me. My relationship with Jesus, my family, my wife, and so forth are so much more of a true picture of who I really am. I am not Toby the Airline Pilot. I am Toby, a child of God, Toby, a husband to Laura, Toby, a son of Jerry and Suzann.

Too often, people, usually men, find so much of their identity in their job. So many of us guys relate to who we are as being what we do. If who I am is an airline pilot, then who am I when I lose my job? If I am a husband, then who am I when my spouse divorces me? If I’m a parent, then who am I when my kids are grown up and gone? There is only one identity that is eternal. There is only one true identity that I can have. Who am I really? I am a child of God.

Some of my pilot friends get their entire self image from who they are at work. Sitting at the bar, trying to pick up girls, the “I’m a pilot” line usually comes out with a certain hope that it will be impressive. Some of them ignore their families and are gone all the time, because they are always driven to advance their career as quickly and as far up the ladder as possible. Some spend all their time in training because they are leap frogging from one plane to the next one and always wanting to fly the bigger, shiny, new airplane, even if it means a terrible lifestyle adjustment. I know that this probably happens in a lot of careers, not just aviation.

The line that I try to share with people is that, “A pilot is what I do, it’s not who I am.” Some of my blog posts can get a little heavy on the piloting stuff and sometimes I need a healthy reminder that life is ultimately about relationships. It’s not about flying a 747 or how much money is made or how big the house is or what career path is chosen. What is the meaning of life? This classic philosophical question seems like such a toughie, but it’s only because we’ve made it tough. The answer is really simple. The meaning of life is to love and praise God, to bring Him glory, and to foster relationships with people.

No one gets to the end of their life, as they lay on their death bed, and wishes that they had worked a little more overtime. No one at that point wishes that they had made just a little more money, took fewer vacations, nurtured a grudge toward someone special for years, or made that great promotion thirty years ago. No, at that point, it’s all about the people surrounding the bedside. It’s all about people and the relationships made with our short time here on Earth. Few, I think, would argue that it would be better to die wealthy and alone than poor and surrounded by the lives that they have impacted over the years. Or to remove finances, pompous and conceited, yet alone, versus humble but surrounded by many.

I’m reminded of the ending to the movie, “Mr. Holland’s Opus.” Mr. Holland always nurtured a grand dream to be a great composer and concert director. He wanted to write music and be famous. He couldn’t make it big, so he took a job, in obscurity, as a high school music teacher. 30 years later, he was still a music teacher, not famous, and had no major music written. He felt his life was a failure. Until the final scene, were, as he is retiring, he walks into the auditorium where it is full of people, his former students over the years. They have gathered to thank him for the impact he had on their lives. Mr. Holland touched so many lives and made a positive impression on so many people, that he finally realized that relationships are what life is all about. It may be nice to have a major musical score written, be wealthy and famous. But, he wouldn’t have traded that for all those kids over the years.

What a great ending to a great story! And what a great reminder to me that as I fly, it’s great fun, but it is not why I’m here on this Earth. Whether someone is an investment banker worth billions or the guy who picks up metal scraps out of our trash can every Monday for money, it’s all the same to God. He will be just as impressed with the man who has nothing as the man who has everything, so long as they understand the true meaning of life and that their identity is in Christ. Why? Because we weak humans look at the outside, but God looks at the heart.

So, what is your identity? Who are you, really? What are you doing to foster relationships? I know that my answer is: not enough . . .

Dr. David Dykes has a sermon on this very theme.