John Flynn's Easter Gift

Our vast Southern continent lies safe beneath one of the most remarkable security blankets in human history. While Israelis crouch beneath the protection of the ‘Iron Dome’ that stands sentinel over their tiny country – the wide-spread Australian population rests confidently beneath the kindly ‘Mantle of Safety’ first spread over them by the visionary clergyman John Flynn, almost a century ago.
 
Every day of the year, 87 RFDS aircraft and team of pilots, nurses, doctors, counsellors, drivers and administrators stand ready to reach the farthest corner with the finest care. It’s a level of medical service unparalleled anywhere in the world. So many families from the west, including my own have reason to be deeply grateful for these mercy flights that save lives.  

​On May 17th 1928 in Cloncurry Central Queensland, a leased Qantas De Havilland DH.50 biplane named Victory took to the air. It was piloted by Arthur Affleck with Dr Kenyon St Vincent Welch on board. At the time, a mantle of safety across Australia’s 7.69 million square kilometres seemed an impossible dream and Flynn, just a wild-eyed optimist.
 
But since then, all across the backcountry, people have dug deep in their pockets when asked to fuel Flying Doctor aircraft or to fund ‘Flynn’s Angels’- the nurses who manned remote medical outposts. Over the years, punters at Louth Races on the Darling haven’t hesitated to invest their ‘hard-earned’ to keep the air ambulances aloft, often in a race against death. For decades, patrons of the Royal Mail Hotel at tiny Hungerford on The Dog Fence have regularly flung $20 notes bearing John Flynn’s image skyward, papering the ceiling of the bar with a tangible tribute to a great Australian.
 
They know what we owe that hard-working dreamer. Most of us are proud of this iconic medical service, but how many in The Land Down Under realise that this protective cloak was woven from thread spun in Galilee in Israel, over two millennia ago?
 
Why not ask John Flynn himself how he wove the fabric?
 
He would say he gathered the first threads roaming the beautiful countryside around his home in the village of Moliagul Victoria and then riding in the rugged Gippsland mountains as a travelling missionary. The bush and bush-people won his heart. As a young man he had soaked up the narrative of Jesus’ life at his local Presbyterian church and wove this into a lifetime of practical faith, bent on living out the way of the young rabbi from Nazareth in Australia’s lonely places.
 
Around 1910, a small, linen covered book titled The Bushman’s Companion began circulating in back country shearing sheds and droving camps. It was John Flynn’s first effort to forge a link with men and women out on the edges. They liked the way he spoke as a comrade rather than a preacher, offering everything from first aid, recipes, poetry, homespun philosophy, a calendar and even a funeral service! 
 
He included spiritual help – prayers, hymns and pieces of wisdom from the Bible. He singled out the spectacular Easter story of Jesus’ return from the dead as the historical truth that motivated him most. John Flynn was certain that the confidence of being resurrected changed a person’s whole outlook on life. Being busy mending broken bodies was helpful, but when individuals yielded their maimed souls to the one who brought hope to the world by dying on a Roman cross, it meant renewal of the whole person for eternity.
 
As he toiled at building the Flying Doctor Service, John Flynn set himself to dismiss the accusation he’d heard from the hardened men around the bush that this ‘pie-in the sky’ stuff robbed a man of his manhood. He asked,
 
“And what of today? Who are the most eager to spread material blessings amid the barren stretches of the earth? There is no place for argument. Always those who are most deeply moved by the risen Jesus are found in the front ranks.”  
 
Take the medical student Clifford Peel as an example – a young airman inspired by John Flynn’s dream and convinced in his Christian faith. The Flight Lieutenant poured his thoughts out in a letter while on a troopship headed to the War in France in 1917 which, to Flynn’s delight, set out a ground-breaking manifesto for an airbourne medical service – probably the first of its kind anywhere in the world.
 
It would soon become the pattern for Flynn’s mantle of safety, spurring nurses, doctors, padres and pilots who shared the same vision and faith, to stretch it across Australia’s remote Inland places. Sadly, the brilliant young Clifford was shot down over the Western Front and never saw his dream realised.
 
New generations living in Australia urgently need to hear foundational stories like this. Twenty years ago, I sat listening in a forum where a battery of highly intelligent thinkers were reminding us of the way Jesus’ footprints and fingerprints are discoverable in every corner of our country. I was challenged by one historian’s stark statement.
 
It is not that we knew it once and have forgotten it. We never knew it. Nobody has ever told us. Our Christian heritage has never been identified as such and therefore is in danger of being totally lost before it has been found.
 
As I was thinking this story through in the early hours of the morning, I heard the roar of a twin-engine Beechcraft taking off from the nearby RFDS Base in Dubbo, most likely to retrieve a sick or injured patient. It stirred me to pray that bringing the fabric of John Flynn’s ‘mantle of safety’ out to be examined in the open daylight, will cause you to stop this Easter and reflect on the multiple blessings Australia owes to Jesus.