A Few Minutes

After spending a week in Toronto, Canada, seeing old friends, visiting my high school, and enjoying the many attractions the city offers, my family was ready to go home. It was a sunny day and a great day for flying. We knew our departure time and what time we needed to be at the airport. We were only five minutes from the airport, and we did not anticipate any problems. We woke up that morning with time to spare. There was just one more thing we had to do before we started to pack. I am too ashamed to tell you what that one more thing was. It is embarrassing because now, in hindsight, I know that it could have been avoided.

Needless to say, what we thought would be an easy task did not go as planned. In the end, we left the hotel later than we had expected and had to navigate our way through an unfamiliar airport. You see, although I had been to Toronto several times before, I had never needed to drive. Someone picked me up, drove me around, and dropped me off. Not this time. This time I had to learn to navigate Toronto for myself. Instead of going straight to terminal 3, we found ourselves at terminal 1 and had to take the tram over to terminal 3.

This cost us valuable time. We hurried to the check-in desk only to learn that we had missed the boarding call by a few minutes. Oh no! The plane was still there, but we were not allowed to get on it. In all our years of travel, this had never happened to us.

It really stung! This experience reminds me of the story Jesus told about the ten virgins. Five had extra oil and went to the wedding feast. Five neglected to make preparations. “When the foolish virgins reached the banqueting hall, they received an unexpected denial. The master of the feast declared, ‘I know you not.’ They were left standing without, in the empty street, in the blackness of the night.”* The parable offers a word to the wise: be ready. This was a hard lesson to learn because we missed our flight, but I am certain it will not happen again! My friends, let us not miss out on that final boarding call.

A few minutes late could cost eternity.

Dana M. Bean

* Ellen G. White, Christ’s Object Lessons (Washington, DC: Review and Herald®, 1969), 406.