“Two Incidents | Three Aircraft | Seventy Tragic Deaths”

Wednesday, February 05, 2025

Last Wednesday night, just about the same time that we were starting our midweek Bible study, an American Airlines jet collided in midair with an Army helicopter right in the middle of Washington, DC. Both vehicles burst into flame and went down into the Potomac River. News outlets and officials were fairly certain by the next morning that no one had survived the crash, and since then, that has been confirmed. Sixty-four passengers and crew from the plane and the three soldiers from the helicopter were all killed.

And then, just two days later, another plane—this one an air ambulance that was transporting patients out of Philadelphia—crashed nose-down into a Philly neighborhood. Seven people were killed either by the crash from injuries received from it. The plane was in the air less than one minute before it met its end, and again, there were no survivors.

Tragedies like these tend to generate ripples of worries that spread far beyond the scope of the incident. We worry that these incident indicate that the entire air travel system is broken or becoming dangerous. We worry that something malicious was done to bring down any or all of the aircraft. We worry that its happening in D.C. might indicate some sort of national-level attack. All of these concerns, and more besides, were heard repeatedly in the news coverage last week. And so, again, the ripples of worry about something like this tend to spread beyond the incident itself.

Here are three reminders to help us be wise about events like these:

First: That tragedies are an inescapable part of life. It’s a reality that we should accept. In fact, airplane incidents happen more regularly than we probably realize—some with fatalities and some without. You might remember Captain Sullenberger’s emergency landing in the Hudson River in 2009, or the door blowing off the Alaska Airlines jet in March of last year, or the Baltimore bridge that collapsed that same month. All of these just remind us that life simply doesn’t guarantee us perfect safety. And this has always been the case (cf. Lk. 13:4). That’s why our hope for ultimate safety isn’t in this life. It’s with God, in eternity.

Second: While tragedy is a reality that we will face often in life, we can’t allow ourselves to become desensitized to it. We must still allow ourselves to mourn the loss of life every time we see it. We mourn the deaths of some 70 people who died suddenly, praying that God will take their souls into his care and that they knew Jesus, by whom they may find rest. As the scripture says, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care” (Mt. 10:29, NIV). If God cares about the deaths of all of his creatures, then we must especially be willing to join him in caring about these people’s deaths.

Third: That while many things in life are increasingly predictably safe (these were the first 2 jet crashes in the U.S. since 2009), nothing is guaranteed. So let’s just take a reminder to be ready for our time to meet the Lord at all times, “because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him” (Mt. 24:44).

We continue to live in this world, but our hope, as always, must be anchored behind the veil in the presence of a God who is both almighty and thoroughly good.

 - Dan Lankford, minister

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