Constant Feedback

I've always liked Stephen Covey's analogy of an airplane being off track 90% of the time but arriving at its destination. He was talking about families. But I thought of it today when I was thinking about devotions, quiet time or whatever you want to call that daily feedback time when you read your Bible, meditate and pray:

It's like the flight of an airplane. Before the plane takes off, the pilots have a flight plan. They know exactly where they're going to start off in accordance with their plan. But during the course of the flight, wind, rain, turbulance, air traffic, human error, and other factors work upon that plane. They move it in slightly different directions so that most of the time that plane is not even on the prescribed flight path!Throughout the entire trip there are slight deviations from the flight plan. Weather systems or unusually heavy air traffic may even cause major deviations. But barring anything too major, the plane will arrive at its destination.

Now how does that happen? During the flight, the pilots receive constant feedback. They receive information from instruments that read the environment, from control towers, from other airplanes - even sometimes from the stars. And based on that feedback, they make adjustments so that time and time again, they keep returning to the flight plan.

- Stephen R. Covey, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families"