After September 11, airlines bolted a reinforced, locked door onto every cockpit in the world. It was built to keep terrorists out. Nobody imagined the terrorist would already be inside.
On September 30, in the midst of the holiday of Sukkot, that is exactly what happened over the Arabian desert. The co-pilot of FlyDubai Flight 1073, bound for Tel Aviv with a cabin full of Israelis – including 27 children – stabbed the captain and began smashing the instruments. The plane plunged more than 17,000 feet. Passengers heard the screams and rushed forward, straight toward a door designed to keep them out, a door no fist and no shoulder could break.
Then it opened. The captain, bleeding and seconds from collapse, reached over and unlocked it. A plumber named Yaniv Hayoun, whose entire aviation education came from watching the air-crash series Mayday, dragged the attacker from his seat, put him in a chokehold, and hauled back on the controls until a pilot could take over. Hours later, Hayoun walked into Ben Gurion Airport in a bloodstained shirt, and the prime minister of Israel wrapped him in a hug.
Everyone on that flight called it a miracle, and it was. But it was a strange kind of miracle. If God wanted those 174 passengers to land safely, He could have kept the attacker off the plane. He could have given them two dull hours of turbulence and bad coffee. Instead, He let a planeload of Jewish families believe they were about to die, and only then did He throw the door open.
This is nothing new. Israel stood trapped between Pharaoh’s chariots and the sea before the waters split. Haman’s decree was signed, sealed and dated before Esther ever walked into the king’s chamber. Again and again, God rescues His people at the last possible second, but only after they stare destruction in the face
Why does God save us only after letting us fall?
Long before FlyDubai, another Jew boarded a ship heading in the wrong direction. God commanded the prophet Jonah to go east to Nineveh. Jonah went down to the port of Jaffa and bought passage to Tarshish, at the far western edge of the known world. He was not lost. He was running.
God hurled a violent wind onto the sea, and the ship began to break apart. The sailors panicked. Each man cried out to his own god, and the crew threw the cargo overboard to lighten the ship. And where was the prophet of Israel?
Look closely at what God did not do. He did not stop Jonah at the dock. He did not sink the ship before it left the harbor. He let Jonah board, let him sail, let him sleep, and then sent a storm violent enough to shake him awake. The storm did not interrupt God’s plan for Jonah. The storm was God’s plan for Jonah.
Psalm 117 is the shortest chapter in the Bible, just two verses long. Jews sing it on every festival as part of Hallel, the psalms of praise, and the passengers of Flight 1073 sang it that very week:
The Hebrew phrase is ki gavar aleinu chasdo, translated here as “for great is His steadfast love toward us,” literally means “for His kindness has prevailed over us.” Gavar is a word of combat. It shares a root with gibor, a warrior. When Moses raised his hands during the battle against Amalek, “Israel prevailed,” vegavar Yisrael (Exodus 17:11). It is a bizarre word to attach to kindness. Nobody needs to wrestle you to the ground to hand you a gift.
Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Jacobson explains: “Sometimes the Creator has to, as it were, ‘overpower’ us, to intensify His kindness toward us, because we are unwilling to open our hearts.”
We are Jonah, asleep in the hold. Out of fear, habit, pain or plain comfort, we lock ourselves away from our purpose and refuse to face who we are. A gentle knock will not reach us. So God’s kindness does not knock. He “has to overcome me, my fears, my anxieties, the coverings and shells that conceal the depths of my soul, in order to give me the greatest gift in life: the opportunity to encounter myself, my soul, my energy, and my purpose.”
This is the answer to our question. God does not save us after the terror because the terror itself is part of the saving. The storm, the dive, the screams from the front of the cabin are His kindness forcing its way through the locks we bolted ourselves.
What is true for one person is true for a nation. For generations, the Jewish people ran from their identity the way Jonah ran from God. Many Jews built comfortable lives in other lands and preferred not to think too hard about what it means to be chosen. Then came October 7, wars on every border, and a wave of hatred across the West. “Every time the world reminds us, with such violence, of who we are, ‘His kindness has prevailed over us.'” The world’s hatred wakes the sleeper in the hold.
Jonah slept through God’s command, but he could not sleep through the storm. It woke him, threw him over the side of the ship, and in the end carried him to Nineveh. The force that nearly drowned him was the same kindness that saved him.
The passengers of Flight 1073 learned the same lesson. For several terrifying minutes, they were sure they would die. Nobody lives through that and walks off the plane the same person.
This is the kindness of Psalm 117. God does not wait for us to unlock the door. He loves us too much to let us sleep through our lives, so He overwhelms us until we wake up. We can open the door now, or we can wait for Him to break it down. One way or another, His kindness will prevail over us.
