[We are here safe and sound and have a lot more to report than this mopey thing - it is a post written on the flight over - we have written more, but are just getting our internet going - bear with us while we get caught up...and thanks for reading!]
I am writing just off the coast of Nova Scotia. The cabin is bright with a mid day light unfettered by the lower atmosphere. Even here there are many ways to distract us from what is really going on right around us. The back of the headrests offer games, music, movies, shopping channels, news. Most keep their minds in the trough (er, like my children), but a few actually look out the window. When they do, they look a long long time.
The land is white and the seas navy blue. Though I’ve had a lifelong love affair with commercial aviation, I begrudge this miracle of flight for its making things too easy; glossing over a more personal (though grueling and at times, likely terrifying) encounter with God’s brilliant, yet harsh topography; the mountains, the icy bogs, the frozen rivers, the uncertain footing in marshy, frosty lowlands, the valleys, the shores the seas, the unmarked islands and the many, many weeks, months it should take us just cross the Atlantic. On foot, a day’s travel along the shore might cover 20 miles (2 minutes and 17 seconds for us up here) then there could be a rock out cropping that might force you to backtrack to get around it to continue northeast. Maybe you lose half a day, or even a day’s travel. Ultimately, there would be no denying the need of a boat to carry your person above the deadly dark and icy waters – From Nova Scotia to Ireland you would be sailing for a month, I am guessing. If I had to travel this way, I would not take so many bags.
To one degree or another we are all here because our ancestors survived very treacherous journeys – some just this one: crossing the Atlantic. Though we are their offspring, we would likely all die trying to cross like they did. I think of Opiew - he is like one of our ancesters, no food or water for 4 days in the Sudanese desert and then only to discover the provisions he finds have been poisoned. I would have lain down died at the point. No Gatorade, no power bar, no insect repellant, no Jonathan. This huge expanse between Virginia and Ethiopia – who put it there and why? The expanses, the vast and terrible expanses – so many human bones have settled on the ocean’s bottom.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. When the earth was formless and empty, and the darkness was over the surface of the deep, His Spirit hovered over the face of the waters. And He said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Then He said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So He made the expanse and separated the waters under the expanse from the waters above it, and it was so. Then He said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the ground appear;” and it was so. And He saw that it was good.” Genesis 1: 1-10
I have never had the mind that can see the world for how big it really is. When I fly over the tens of thousands of homes along the east coast I am confronted by my impish, narcissistic sorrow that there are so many people I will not get to meet – or more to the point, there are so many people who won’t get to meet me. I dart from this thought to one of the privilege of my vantage point – I see them, but they cannot see me - I am less than a buried pin prick of a face in a white contrail, a dully rumbling line in the sky, should they even be outside, or bother to look up.
I am also likely guilty of superimposing my own thoughts and feelings on the geopolitical landscape - just to tame it, just to preserve a prominent place for myself. Ethiopia, and other crowded places put stress on my conceits – and force me surrender any claim on knowing what the “big picture” is. It is also hard on my delusional overly weighted sense of self – that is a hard one for me to be disabused of, really hard. Every once in awhile I confirm this with a prayer for a horrible situation to be undone – the “no” answer also answers the question whether or not I have a bit of messiah complex going. Embarrassingly, I do. What will God do with a guy like me?
If the Bible is to be trusted, I am informed that there will be a happy ending to all of this, but few of us, if any, have the wit to grasp how that will come about. The Bible is also clear that we not delude ourselves with our “good” activities as they invariably get warped by our deep seated neat to justify ourselves – and that eclipses any hope of relating to God – the being who made EVERYTHING and figured out that making ice float would really be a cool trick to confound the chemists and permit an atmosphere that defies all odds that we should even exist.
We are to sit still in God’s grace and wait, just wait, wait with this ironic twist that we are supposed to both, actively do good (be unselfish, help others) AND not believe WE are making a difference, but rather Him through us .He is inscrutable; He is “love,” but He is inscrutable.
In five more hours we will be flying straight over Cairo – 6 little miles of air will separate the people of this hushed cabin from the despair, uncertainty and hope of the Egyptian people below. I will look for fires and wonder what is burning. I will wonder about the people standing around the fires – what they are looking at, what they are feeling, and what their personal hopes are. And then I bring all these musings and show them to God and ask him, do you really care about all these children? What is your plan for redemption? “Jonathan you haven’t the mind to grasp it. Sit down and do your bit. I am good and though you are very small and silly, I cherish even you. Go to Ethiopia and respond to what you see, oh, and don’t be an idiot.”
No comments:
Post a Comment