THE GRIP OF GRACE

On Sunday, August 16, 1987, Northwest Airlines flight 225 crashed just after taking off from the Detroit airport. One hundred fifty-five people were killed. One survived: a 4-year-old from Tempe, Arizona, named Cecelia.

News accounts say when rescuers found Cecelia they did not believe she had been on the plane. Investigators first assumed Cecelia had been a passenger in one of the cars on the highway onto which the airliner crashed. But when the passenger register for the flight was checked, there was Cecelia's name.

Cecelia survived because, as the plane was falling, Cecelia's mother, Paula Chican, unbuckled her own seat belt, got down on her knees in front of her daughter, wrapped her arms and body around Cecelia, and then would not let her go.

Nothing could separate that child from her parent's love -- not tragedy or disaster, not the fall or the flames that followed, not height nor depth, not life nor death. Such is the love of our Savior for us. He left heaven, lowered Himself to us, and covered us with the sacrifice of His own body to save us.

-- Bryan Chapell in The Grip of Grace


#3596