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Minutes of Meetings with God |
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In Orbit ... |
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| It was 8 days before Thanksgiving , about 35 days before Christmas,
and I was in orbit ... not in outer space ... just in a jet airliner at 30,000
feet over Kentucky, somewhere. I had gone to Pensacola to be with my mother
for her cancer surgery . On the way home, the air traffic control radar
in Cleveland, Ohio (who would have ever imagined that all the East/West
transcontinental air traffic, plus all the airplanes flying over the Midwest
are directed by Cleveland ...I mean, they lost their pro football team) just
up and quit. So the airplane I was on, had to go around and around in circles
for about half an hour to avoid the possibility of crashing into someone
else flying at 500 miles per hour, 5 miles above the Earth.
I leaned my head against the window and watched the same mountains, lakes and rivers pass under us again and again. I must have dozed off several times ... and, in between nodding off, I thought about what had been happening in and around my life. I thought about my mother, who had come through her surgery surprisingly well (thank God!) ... the doctors think that they got all the cancer in her breast by doing a simple lumpectomy and removing a few lymph nodes (she still will have to do some radiation therapy, but it all could have been much, much worse). I thought about my family and my wife's family ... about what different ones had been through, both the good and the bad experiences (the blessings and the trials). I thought about folk at church ... about what different ones had been through. And, I thought about my wife and myself, about what we had been through. All the stuff that had happened, that was running through my head wasn't making much sense ... it didn't seem to fit together. I kept looking out the jet's window ... the view of the world is so different, so beautiful from 5 miles up. The picture from that high up is at once bigger (because it's possible to see farther) and somehow more "whole" (because it's possible to see entire mountains, forests, lakes, and farms ... and to see how they fit together). Each time we flew over the same area, I saw more ... more of the details (a barge going through navigational locks on a river ... a house high on the top of a mountain) and more of how things fit together (the patterns of forests, farms, mountains, rivers and lakes and roads). As I looked and thought, I found myself wishing that I could somehow "orbit" my life ... fly above the flood of details ... and get a better handle on "the big picture" and on how the details of my life fit together into a "whole". I became very aware that, during the last couple of months, I have been exceedingly human and I have been getting lost in the details of my life and my every day living. Even after the air traffic control radar came back on, after the plane and I quit orbiting, and after I made it safely home, I found myself wanting to get above the details and seeing "the big picture." And there have been a great many details of late ... some of the details, folks are able to help me with (and I do appreciate that help) ... however, it seems like in the case of too many of the details, I just have to take care of them by myself. There have been details about our life together as the Church ... preparing for the regular worship services, preparing for the special holiday worship services, special Sunday School activities, Bible study, the Youth Scavenger Hunt, the conversion to natural gas and the installation of the new heating system at the parsonage, getting new front doors for the Azalia Church, trying to get bids for redoing the floor coverings at London Church, food collections for "Caring and Sharing", special holiday food distributions by "Caring and Sharing", getting the churches decorated for the holidays, the Azalia/London/Marble Cooperative Christmas Program, Dundee Interfaith Council holiday activities (the community Thanksgiving service and the community Christmas dinner), Milan Minister's Association holiday activities (the community Thanksgiving service), Monroe County Interfaith Volunteer Caregiver activities, hospital calls (lots of those lately), and other things. There have been the details of my personal life ... trying to deal with the health repercussions of our car accident years ago (I'm trying accu-puncture to help with the pain in my ankle ... it seems to be helping), getting a tangle of roots reamed out of the soil pipe from the toilet in our house's main bathroom (now we can flush again), sorting out ways to best be supportive of my wife's mother and my mother as they struggle with changing health, planning for the holidays and for time with family and friends, getting the house decorated for the holidays, trying to get the inside of my car cleaned out so there will be room in the thing for me to drive it, and then there's my office that desperately needs to be re-organized (don't tell my wife that I admitted to that!), trying to make time to write on the several books that I've got started, and on and on and on and on. Details, details, details. The never ending stream of the little things of life that just keeps on flowing. Now, in my sometimes desperate wish to fly above life's details ... to escape the details ... to see "the big picture" ... I have flown smack into Christmas ... the real, God came into the world as a human being that was born in a barn, Christmas. The real Christmas says ... turn around Mike because the place that you find "the big picture," the place where you find God, is in the details. When God came into the world as one of us, some 2,000 years ago, those people who were the leaders, those people who were supposed to be wise, those people who were looking for "the big picture" of their own lives and of the world ... they, everyone of them, missed the most important of details and the biggest picture of all. They didn't notice the tired man and his even more weary wife trudging into the little town of Bethlehem. She looked like just a pregnant kid. The couple did not appear to be rich. No one noticed this ... the most significant detail in human history. So the local people could not be bothered to provide a decent room where God could be born. Emmanuel ... God with us ... came into this world in a barn ... amongst the simplest and most basic of details ... amongst animals, and straw, and, probably, manure. The very place that people were least likely to look for God ... that is the place that God showed up. Two thousand years ago, had I been flying in a jet at 500 miles per hour and 30,000 feet, I would have seen a lot ... but I would not have seen the tired man and his even more weary wife trudging into the little town of Bethlehem. It's next to impossible to see those kinds of details from up there. If I want to find Emmanuel, I have to be where I can be immersed in the details ... in the day to day stuff of living ... that is where God is. I have to clean the barn ... Merry Christmas! |