The Shepherd in the Sky
Daily Inspiration
Mike flew planes before he preached. Thirty-eight years in the sky, steel and clouds and checklists. He had the kind of face that wore calm the way others wore noise. Pilots need that. So do pastors.
The transition wasn’t loud. He didn’t fall from the sky or rise from a pulpit with fireworks. He just felt it—a pull. First a whisper. Then a weight. He was reading Scripture in layovers. Talking gospel in crew lounges. Watching men drink away loneliness and thinking, There’s more than this. He took early retirement, not because he had to, but because it was time.
He traded wings for the Word.
He became a pastor, the kind who didn’t shout. He didn’t point fingers or polish his sermons like speeches. He just opened the book and walked through it slowly, the way you walk through a valley when someone’s buried a child and there’s nothing to say but I’m here.
He and his wife had lost one too. A child. He never said much about it. Just that the grief had changed him. Made the cross heavier. And holier.
For seventeen years, he pastored a small flock. Not small in pain, though. Addicts. Widows. Young men who hated their fathers. Women who carried shame like a second skin. He didn’t fix them. He didn’t try. He told them a story.
A love story, he called it.
The greatest ever told.
He spoke of the cross—not as a theory, but as a rescue. Not improvement. Not advice. A ransom. He said sin wasn’t a bad habit. It was a prison. And Jesus didn’t bring a lecture—He brought a key.
People didn’t always understand. But they knew what it meant to be stuck. And they knew what it meant to be seen.
When the pastoring season ended, Mike didn’t stop. The pulpit was gone, but the mission stayed. He found Substack. Found a way to write in the quiet. Found that the voice of the gospel still carried, even when typed behind a screen. Especially then.
He called it Eternal Love Stories.
Each week, he’d sit with a Bible. Think of what people were facing. Anger. Lust. Gluttony. Shame. Not as headlines, but as heartbreak. He’d remember the faces. The stories behind the sin. He didn’t expose to condemn. He held it to the light and said, Look—He died for this.
He said the blood didn’t just forgive—it freed.
Some people wanted practical tips. How to change. How to try harder. He didn’t give them that. He gave them Christ. Not as theory, but as lifeline. And he told them the story again and again until it sunk in—until they saw the prison open and dared to walk out.
The gospel wasn’t fresh because it changed. It was fresh because the wounds did. New regrets. New temptations. New nights when you couldn’t sleep because the past still lived in your bones. So Mike wrote it again. And again.
He said he didn’t write to impress. He wrote to rescue.
And it showed.
He wrote about Ruth and Boaz. Hosea and Gomer. The woman at the well. Not as stained-glass saints, but as people who loved wrong things until Love found them. He said we all had idols. We called them different names—career, comfort, control—but they all left us hollow.
He didn’t shout. Didn’t need to. The cross wasn’t loud. It was love in quiet agony.
He called that his style. Quiet agony. Hope buried like treasure in dirt. The light under the surface. He said he wasn’t special. Just a man taken hold of by Christ. A man who had been forgiven much. So he wrote much. And loved much.
Some days the noise got to him. The online noise. The endless takes. The shouting. The pride dressed up as ministry. He felt small in that world. Like a whisper in a windstorm.
But he remembered: light doesn’t have to be loud to pierce darkness.
And love doesn’t have to trend to matter.
People wrote him back. Quiet letters. Broken stories. A woman who had relapsed but read something and prayed again. A man who had left his family but wanted to go home. A teen who had tried everything but still felt hollow and wondered if maybe grace was for him too.
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Mike didn’t post their letters. He prayed over them. He wept sometimes. Then he wrote again.
Each week, a new chapter. A new devotional. A new thread of hope pulled from the old, rugged cross and tied to someone drifting in the sea.
He never sought legacy. But if he could leave one, it would be this:
That the gospel is still enough.
That Jesus still saves.
That the greatest love story ever told is still being written—in addicts who walk free, in marriages pulled from the edge, in fathers who pray with trembling hands, in women who stand again.
Mike didn’t call himself a storyteller. He called himself a witness.
To love that doesn’t give up.
To a cross that still bleeds light.
To a God who finds you in the trench, not just the pew.
He flew planes once. He saw the world from thirty thousand feet. But he said he saw God best on the ground. In tears. In failures. In second chances.
He said the gospel was power.
Not loud power.
Not military power.
The kind that breaks chains in silence.
The kind that walks into the tomb and walks out again.
The kind that shows up every week, on a Substack page, quietly telling the world:
He is still here.
And He still loves.
Even now.
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Inspiration for This Story.
This story was inspired by the life and mission of Mike Cleveland—a retired airline pilot turned pastor, now a gospel writer on Substack. His quiet dedication to helping others find freedom through the cross—especially in the midst of grief and deep human struggle—reflects a truth lived, not shouted. Mike’s voice isn’t loud, but it carries the weight of love, redemption, and unshakable faith. His story reminds us that in a noisy world, it’s often the quiet truth, spoken with conviction, that reaches the brokenhearted and brings light to the darkest places.
—John Rinaldo
About Mike.
Mike Cleveland is a retired pastor and former airline pilot who now shares the gospel through weekly devotionals on Substack. With a heart shaped by personal loss and years of shepherding others, Mike writes to set captives free—not with self-help tips, but with the power of the cross. His messages are quiet yet strong, filled with grace, truth, and the unwavering belief that Jesus rescues and restores. Through Eternal Love Stories, he brings Scripture to life, reaching people in their everyday struggles. Mike’s life is a testament to humble faith, steady love, and the quiet strength found in surrender.
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Hey John
This write- up was like reading a poem.
Very smooth and calm 👍🏻👏😊