Here is the dramatic chronicle of the men and women who comprise the Jungle Aviation and Radio Service (JAARS), the flying arm of the famous Wycliffe Bible Translators. Viewed from a distance, they live a life of color and adventure, but however dramatic and colorful the job of these pilots may seem, it is basically a rigorous, lonely, and thankless task.

Most of the JAARS personnel could command handsome salaries among American and European commercial airlines. All of them could thrive as leaders in the renewal sweeping the civilized Western world, and draw large crowds to hear their testimonies. But these are rugged people who have heard the call of Christ to come away from the glory of the crowds and comfortable living to serve naked aborigines and headhunters whose languages have never been committed to writing. Sometimes, their only thanks is a brandished spear.

But far above the clouds, they do enjoy the momentary glory of looking down at the shadow their little crafts cast on the cloud-tops. Around that shadow, a peculiar dispersion of the sun’s rays creates a corona of light. Pilots have long called that corona “the glory”, and when they finally have to descend beneath the clouds, they fly “into the glory”. At the moment the plane and shadow converge at the cloud, there is a virtual explosion of light. And in a special sense for the pilots of JAARS, they do fly into the glory—the glory of serving the least of all the peoples of the earth in obedience to Jesus Christ.