I have been offered lately to go up in an airplane with a friend. This is not a commercial airplane but a private airplane.

I saw a picture of one of the planes and it looked a bit small, it didn’t have a roof over cockpit, I don’t know if the plane I saw even had two seats.

It looked like it would be fun but I think I would be a bit scared. Then I thought back to my childhood.

When I was a little girl, I would play with my Daddy in bed, before we both fell asleep. I would beg him to take me on a “flight.” He would hoist me up on his feet, my belly glued to his soles, my arms outstretched and I would giggle as I “flew” this way and that over the landscape of him and Mommy’s bed. These were some cherished memories of my Daddy and me.

As I got older my Daddy stopped playing “airplane” with me but I never stopped loving him.

My Dad had always wanted to fly a plane but my Mom refused to let him. He was fearless about weather and he didn’t fear bad weather enough to be a safe pilot.

She made the right call on that one because we all needed him to be alive more than he needed to fly.

As my brother got older he started picking up that fearlessness. He didn’t want to fly an airplane but he became a thrill seeker. If there was a death defying roller coaster he was one it.

I love them both so much and I feel so blessed by God to have a Dad and a brother whom I love so deeply.

There is just one problem. They don’t love each other. I don’t know that they ever have.

It breaks my heart that two men whom I love so deeply hurt each other so often. Tonight I was almost in tears over their discord.

Then I had a “God” thought.

“I wonder if this is how God feels when members of His church family hurt each other and they refuse to seek forgiveness and reconcile in love?”

We are God’s family if we are in the church. We should love one another, not go on the attack and single out people who are “different” for persecution.