Why Did I Miss My Flight?

My flight from Fort Lauderdale to JFK was set to take off at 1:01 PM. For some reason, I thought it was at 1:10—a nine-minute difference.

For reasons beyond my control I arrived at the terminal at 12:28, walked up to the desk, and . . . was informed that I had missed the “half an hour before takeoff deadline” and that they had just closed the desk. In short: I missed my flight.

No story I could come up with could convince the lady at the desk to let me check in, and so I was left with no option but to buy a new ticket on a different airline. Thank G‑d, I was given a refund for the missed flight.

With much time on my hands until the flight, I started playing G‑d, trying to figure out why I had missed my flight; after all, it was the first time in my life that I had made such a mistake. I’m usually one of those who arrive together with the elderly even before the desk has opened.

Hmmm . . . I thought, maybe G‑d did this to me because he wants me to fly on the next flight, where the guy next to me will be contemplating suicide and yours truly will be his savior!

Or maybe . . . I will meet someone in the airport who just happens to be on the Forbes 400 and is modest enough to own his own jet, and will just be desperate to tithe, and guess who will be the beneficiary?

I started playing G‑d, trying to figure out why I had missed my flightOr maybe I would stand on line to board the next flight, with my boarding pass sticking out, and an older Russian immigrant would grab a peek at it, his eyes would tear, and he would ask me timidly, “Tell me, is Meir Avtzon your grandfather? Yes? Oh my G‑d! He was my uncle; I thought he died in the war!”

Yes, I admit, I have quite an imagination. But I think all of us who believe in G‑d’s attention to detail and His divine providence can identify with the situation where things seem to be working against our plans: our wallet gets lost, traffic holds up an important meeting, or our spick-and-span carpet was just the recipient of a baby’s burp. And we the believers, in our quest to make sense of these inconveniences, scheme up some fantastic reason why this would happen.

After all, there must be a reason why it happened. And it must be a reason that works for me. It must make sense to me. Mustn’t I know the whys of everything in life?

Alas, this was not to be. The person next to me was a jolly fellow who was as far from suicide as I was from knowing what to say to someone on a cliff. The closest someone in my vicinity was to the Forbes 400 was the shabby-looking fellow stopping at the newsstand asking for a bargain on the latest edition of Forbes magazine.

And last but not least, my grandfather’s lost nephew, if alive at all, most probably can’t read English for the life of him . . .

Does this mean that this entire schlep happened to me by mistake? No way!

I don’t have to understand His ways to believe that He knows best. And my delay gave me an opportunity, as I pondered its possible reasons, to sit in the airport and learn Torah. Perhaps that was the reason for my delay? Learning Torah brings holiness to our environment, and maybe that was exactly what was needed.

I still don’t know why I missed the flight, and I might never know. But I am sure that it was G‑d who orchestrated the events that day in Florida, as sure as I am that it is He who orchestrated that you will be reading this article at this very moment.