My flight from Seattle to Dallas-Fort Worth pushes back from the gate forty-five minutes late. And now, unexplainably, we idle on the tarmac for another ten minutes.

“You’ll be fine,” I recall the gate agent telling me before boarding as she clicks across her keyboard to assess my Dallas-to-Wichita connection. She feels confident I will make it. I do not feel so sure.

Four hours after leaving Seattle we pierce through a patch of cloud and land in Dallas.

The sound system in the cabin crackles to life. “This is your captain speaking.” A ripple of dread runs through me. “We’re waiting for the gate to open,” he informs us. “It may be just another ten or fifteen minutes.”

I do not recall whether it is the captain or I who choke on that word fifteen.

I look at my clock: It is 6:02 p.m. Make that 6:03. My Wichita boarding starts at 5:55, and ends 6:25. I am sitting closer to the back of the cabin than the front. Instinctively I choose to hope.

I gaze out the window at the tarmac. Fellow passengers grow restless. Silently I pray words from my morning invocations. 

“Lord Jesus, risen Christ, you are my light, you are my stronghold: I worship you. You are my shelter, you are my confidence: I worship you. You are my salvation, you are my path: I worship you.”

I breathe gently, deeply, intentionally, before each invocation.

Finally we begin the slow process of deboarding. I choose to not look at my clock.

I choose instead to pass through the narrow gate of hope. Maybe my flight to Wichita will be delayed. With this thought I feel a small burst of encouragement and possibility.

At this hour, on a Saturday evening, I doubt there’s a later flight to Wichita. I think some logistical thoughts, and keep my soul resting in the space of hope.

Finally, it’s my turn to deboard. I race as best I can up the jet bridge, past fellow passengers, and follow the signs for the SkyLink train to Concourse C. I gallop up the escalator, jump onto the waiting car, and whoosh, off we go.

I jump off at the second stop. I fly down the escalator, and run—I mean run—down the concourse. At C15 I hear over the P.A. system, “Last call for Wichita.”

My jam-packed laptop bag and my somewhat lighter backpack make me feel like I am running hard underwater. And now I make a fool of myself, flailing my arms wildly and hollering toward C20: Hold Wichita! Hold Wichita!

My legs tremble and grow weaker with every step. Press on, I tell myself. Breathe, and press on.

My legs tremble more, and I think I cannot endure. Jesus, I pray, this one’s for you.

I see the sign for C20. The gate area is vacant. Except for one fellow. Ah! The gate agent!

“Wichita?” he says to me.

Breathless, trembling, I manage to croak Yes!

He scans my boarding pass, and I fly down the jet bridge.

Everyone is buckled in and ready to go. A few passengers eye me as though I might be the cause of their universe falling apart.

Sorry!

I find my seat, second row from the rear. 

I throw my laptop bag and backpack under the seat. My heart is racing

What does hope look like?

It looks like a woman of God on mission, flying against the odds down airport corridors, up escalators, down escalators, down more long corridors, through the concourse to an empty gate, racing against the odds.

Hope is an enfleshed thing. It is not so much a prayer as the trembling of leg muscles, as body and spirit press toward the logically impossible. Not because I can, but because my mission at this moment impels me.

“Hope is not hope in things seen,” the Apostle Paul writes. 

And words of the Psalmist come to mind: “My soul clings to you; your right hand holds me fast.” Jesus knew these words. He prayed them.

Hope yields real results, accomplishing what would not make sense if God did not exist. This is the definition of “miracle.”

Hope is not magic. Miracles are not magic. Hope, I discover, requires total skin in the game, a readiness to fly, against the odds, with the Holy Spirit.