The Story
On Wednesday morning, a routine flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv almost became one of the worst tragedies of our time.
Somewhere over the desert, the co-pilot repeatedly stabbed the captain, and the plane plunged from the sky. It dropped nearly 14,000 feet in under 30 seconds. Passengers felt it spinning and sinking. Many of them were sure they had only moments left to live.
And then, one after another, the miracles started showing up.
Miracle one: The flight existed at all. Just a few years ago, there was no such thing as a direct flight full of Israelis leaving an Arab country. That route only exists because of the Abraham Accords, the peace agreements President Trump brokered in 2020 between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Without that peace, these families would never have been on that plane, and nobody would have been there to stop what happened.
Miracle two: The open door. Before collapsing from his wounds, the captain, Smit Machchhar, managed to unlock the cockpit door. That one final act opened the way for help to reach him.
Miracle three: A little girl needed the restroom. At that exact moment, a mother was walking her young daughter toward the restroom. She heard screaming from the cockpit and immediately alerted a crew member.
Miracle four: A plumber who watched TV. Several passengers rushed in and overpowered the attacker as he tried to sabotage the plane. Then one of them, a plumber named Yaniv, grabbed the controls and pulled up, stopping the dive. He said he only knew to do that because he had once watched a TV show about plane crashes.
Miracle five: The only doctor on board. Dr. Shota Musaev ran forward without hesitating. He helped tie up the attacker with headphone cords and then started treating the captain, who had lost a massive amount of blood. He was the only doctor on that plane. The captain made it through surgery and is now in stable condition.
Miracle six: A second crew in the back row. A complete second flight crew just happened to be riding on that plane. A passenger ran to the back to find them, and they took the controls and brought the plane down safely, even though the attacker had damaged it.
Miracle seven: An open door in Saudi Arabia. The plane landed in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, a country that still has no official peace agreement with Israel. Yet the passengers were not met with hostility. They were met with food, medical care, and kindness. One widely shared video showed a Muslim woman in a full face covering tenderly caring for Israeli passengers.
Every one of the 174 people on board survived, including about 30 children.
That isn’t one miracle. That’s a miracle wrapped inside a miracle, wrapped inside another one.
The Scripture
“Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear.”
Isaiah 65:24 (NIV)
How I Understand This Scripture
God spoke these words through Isaiah as a promise about the new things He would do for His people. The way I understand it, God is telling us that He isn’t waiting around for us to discover the problem. He’s already ahead of it.
That’s what strikes me most about this story. Long before anyone on that plane cried out, the answers were already in place. A peace agreement signed six years earlier. A second crew booked onto the flight. A plumber who once watched a TV show. A doctor who happened to buy a ticket for that exact flight. A little girl who needed the restroom at exactly the right second. And a nation with no peace treaty that chose to open its doors anyway.
None of those things looked like miracles when they happened. They looked like ordinary life.
My Reflection
We tend to think of miracles as one big dramatic moment. Fire from heaven. A sea splitting open. But most of the time, I believe God works the way He did on that plane. He weaves together dozens of small, ordinary details, some of them set in motion years in advance, that only make sense when you look back.
It took me a long time to see that in my own life. For years, I only looked for God in the big moments and missed Him in the small ones. The delay that kept me out of trouble. The conversation I didn’t plan. The person who showed up right when I needed them. Looking back now, I can see His hand all over places I once called coincidence.
And here’s something else that moves me. Peace made this rescue possible. Peace put that plane in the air, and kindness from people who were supposed to be enemies met it on the ground. Every act of peace we make, no matter how small, may be setting up a miracle we’ll never see coming.
Maybe you’re in a free fall right now. Maybe it feels like the plane is spinning and you’ve only got seconds left. Here’s what I want you to hear. God has already placed things in your path that you don’t even know about yet. The answer may already be sitting in the back row.
And one more thing. A plumber and a dentist didn’t wait for someone else to act. They ran toward the danger. God used ordinary people with ordinary knowledge to do extraordinary things. He may want to use you the same way for someone else.
A Prayer
Father, thank You for being a God who answers before we even call. Thank You for protecting every life on that flight, and for the courage of a wounded captain, a plumber, a dentist, and every passenger who stood up when it mattered. Thank You for the peace that put that plane in the sky, and for the kindness that met it on the ground. I pray full healing for the injured and peace for everyone who lived through that terror. Open my eyes to see Your hand in the small details of my own life. When I feel like I’m falling, remind me that You are already ahead of me. Make me a peacemaker, and make me willing to be part of someone else’s miracle. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Before You Go
Please, share this post with as many people as you can. The world is full of bad news, and people need to hear that God is still moving. Someone you know is in their own free fall right now and needs to be reminded that help may already be on board. Send it, post it, text it. Let’s spread some hope today.
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