…when was the last time you made a paper airplane? For me it had been years. Then, today, a thought – my littlest daughter, who is currently airplane obsessed, might like one. We live fairly near an airport and whenever she is outside and hears the fading or growing roar of a plane she looks up to the sky and yells, “aaaayyrrpwannnneeee!!!” So on this day when the whole family is suffering from some differing forms of the flu or cold or plague or something, I thought paper airplanes might be the trick. Plus, simple things like these seem to be things Jesus might have actually loved.

That made wonder if Jesus ever made a simple little airplane when he was in Joseph’s shop? When no one was looking did he affix some pieces of light wood and sail them around the shop? Making a glider, after all, isn’t such a big deal when one has also created spinning galaxies. Would he have known how? All that, of course, begs deeper questions about how aware he was of his divinity and power. Anne Rice did such a beautiful job exploring questions like those in her beautiful book Christ The Lord: Out of Egypt. That said, she neglected any discussion of model airplanes. Perhaps in the next book.

Back to my weekend. I found the best paper glider – it is called the dragon and I encourage you to make one today. To finish the story – my daughter wasn’t actually that amused by the airplane. She looked at it fly by, ran after it, picked it up (with her beloved puppet pig in her other hand) tried to throw it but failed to get any lift and moved on. Sam, the newfoundland dog, however, loved it and thus Livvy was amused watching my dog catch and munch countless paper airplanes on this rainy and cold winter afternoon.