{"id":5451,"date":"2026-05-21T08:34:51","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T12:34:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5451"},"modified":"2026-05-21T08:34:51","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T12:34:51","slug":"heroes-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/21\/heroes-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Heroes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast<\/em>,\u00a0click here<\/a>

It\u2019s hard to overstate the global acclaim that fell upon Charles Lindbergh when he became the first aviator\u00a0to fly solo from the United States to Europe.\u00a0\u00a0

In his book One Summer,<\/em> cultural historian Bill Bryson documents the mania that engulfed Lindbergh when he landed outside Paris 99 years ago today \u2013 May 21, 1927, at 10:22 pm.

Lindbergh, a\u00a0shy and obscure 25-year-old Air Mail pilot,\u00a0had been airborne for 33-and-a-half hours.\u00a0

As he approached Le Bourget airfield, he wondered if he should have applied for a French visa.\u00a0He also wondered if anyone would still be awake\u00a0to meet him.

Looking down, Lindbergh caught sight of the lights of tens of thousands of cars streaming toward the airport.\u00a0He had no idea they had all come\u00a0in\u00a0the hope\u00a0of seeing\u00a0him<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0

Once on the ground, he was mobbed. Euphoric people tore at his clothes. Souvenir hunters wrenched\u00a0off pieces of his plane,\u00a0Spirit of<\/em>St. Louis<\/em>. He was rescued by two French aviators who guided him to safety, while the mob descended jubilantly upon an innocent bystander named Harry Wheeler, a merchant from the Bronx\u00a0who had a passing resemblance to Lindbergh.\u00a0\u00a0

Back in America, the country seemed to come unglued.

Bryson writes, “Horns sounded, sirens blared, church bells rang. From end to end the nation erupted in the kind of jubilant cacophony made when wars end.”

The New York Times<\/em> dedicated its first four pages to \u201cLucky Lindy\u2019s\u201d flight, even though the only news they actually had to report was that he had made it.\u00a0The New York Evening World<\/em> called it “the greatest feat of a solitary man in the records of the human race.”\u00a0Another newspaper declared it to be\u00a0“the greatest event since the Resurrection.”

Not to be outdone, the North American Review<\/em> breathlessly declared that the earth reverberated with “the long-waiting joy of humanity at the coming of the first citizen of the world, the first human being entitled to give his address as ‘The Earth,’ the first Ambassador-at-Large to Creation.” Wow.

It quickly became clear that no one could possibly live up to such expectations.

But the mania had just begun.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0

Politicians proposed that May 21 should become a national holiday.\u00a0Major League Baseball granted America’s new hero\u00a0a lifetime pass to every game (a pretty awesome perk during the same year that Babe Ruth famously hit 60 home runs).\u00a0His home state of Minnesota even considered the idea of renaming\u00a0itself Lindberghia.

“Parks were named after him, children were named after him, streets and mountains, hospital wards, zoo animals, rivers, high schools, and bridges \u2013 all were named after him.”

The painfully introverted\u00a0aviator, who had never been on a date, received more than 3.5 million personal letters, the vast majority from adoring females.\u00a0At least\u00a0250 songs were written in celebration\u00a0of his\u00a0epic flight across the Atlantic.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

Charles Lindbergh was the kind of hero the world had never seen.

The irony is that he wanted none of the adulation.\u00a0He mourned the loss of his privacy.\u00a0Why couldn’t people just leave him alone?\u00a0\u00a0

It wasn’t long before Lindbergh became a disappointment.\u00a0He didn’t seem grateful enough for all the honors he received.\u00a0He didn’t smile and wave enough during every small town’s parade.\u00a0

He\u00a0later elicited outrage by expressing\u00a0admiration for Nazi Germany\u00a0and suggesting that America should stay out of World War II.\u00a0Years after his death, evidence emerged that he had secretly fathered children with multiple women, another blow to his reputation as the ideal human being.

Our heroes inevitably let us down.\u00a0But\u00a0the yearning for heroes never seems to fade.\u00a0\u00a0

Where we can find someone who will lead us and love us?\u00a0Where can we find someone who will always come through for us?

Strangely, even the Bible turns out to be a library of failure stories. \u00a0

Abraham failed to take seriously God’s promise\u00a0that his\u00a0descendants would one day become a great nation.\u00a0Jacob failed to treat his children fairly, thus sowing\u00a0murderous anger between them.\u00a0Moses failed in his first\u00a0attempt to rescue the Hebrews\u00a0from slavery in Egypt, thereby squandering 40 years of his life.\u00a0David failed in his marriage(s) and his parenting.\u00a0Paul failed to join\u00a0the new Jesus cult, rounding up its members for execution.\u00a0Peter failed to stand beside his Master in his darkest hour, declaring three times that he had never even met him.\u00a0\u00a0

Our would-be heroes always disappoint us. In the end, none of them can save us.

Only Jesus can do that.

Only Jesus can bear the weight of our over-the-top expectations.

No other figure in history can hold a candle to his wisdom, his grace, and his forgiveness. From no one else do \u201cweary and heavy-laden\u201d people receive an invitation to find rest. Jesus alone is associated with credible evidence of an empty tomb and a living presence.

\u201cLindy\u201d may indeed have been fortunate to complete his astonishing flight.

But followers of Jesus consider themselves blessed \u2013 not merely lucky \u2013 when it comes to the One in whom they place their trust.
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here It\u2019s hard to overstate the global acclaim that fell upon Charles Lindbergh when he became the first aviator\u00a0to fly solo from the United States to Europe.\u00a0\u00a0 In his book One Summer, cultural historian Bill Bryson documents the mania that engulfed Lindbergh when he landed outside Paris 99 years ago today \u2013… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5452,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[39,1117],"class_list":["post-5451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-failure","tag-lindbergh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5453,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5451\/revisions\/5453"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}