Chris Paetkau, a wildlife photographer and filmmaker, was flying from Calgary, Canada to Inuvik, Canada with one stop at Yellowknife Airport, before his destination of Inuvik. The dual flights were to last a total of three hours. The plane safely made it to Yellowknife, and then he was to get on his plan for his second leg to Inuvik.

The airline computers had a glitch that day and so the airline employees were manually checking passengers. At his departure gate there were three planes on the tarmac and at a certain point the crowd of passengers all headed for one of the planes. Chris followed this group of passengers assuming they were heading to the same destination he was.

On board the plane, he asked the flight attendant if the plane was headed for Inuvik, she said, “yes…eventually.”  He got on the plane and it wasn’t until halfway through the journey that he realized he on the wrong flight and was going the entirely wrong way. Inuvik was west of Yellowknife, but the plane was heading east. When the plane landed he was over 1400 miles in the wrong direction.¹

Too many times we follow the direction of the crowd, and we often don’t even know where they are going. Doing this—in every instance—lands us in the wrong destination, just like Chris. God invites us to stop traveling our current comfortable course, change course and travel in a superior and more elevated or uplifting direction.