Saturday, July 29, 2006

The sameness and differentness of people

The jumbo jet just pulled up to the gate and will soon unload it’s contents, and then in an hour or so, my group of humanity will stock this big bird full once again. What is infinitely entertaining is the variety of people that crowd this place. I wonder how many weeks (months?) of my life have been spent in airports?

I do not often get bored in airports, no matter how many weeks of my life I have lost in these centers for human transportation. I have been in big airports and tiny ones, busy ones and empty ones. I have even spent the night in one with 15 Mk’s when we were stuck because of bad weather (not an experience I am overly interested in repeating - see previous post about kids). These airports are a microcosmos of the greater world. Because airports are the focal point of multiple travel destinations, they are the funnel through which almost all of us must past to go anywhere, they make for wonderful people-watching places. After 12 years of doing this for a living, we have gotten fairly accomplished at guessing a person’s origins. Guessing a person’s destination is something only God can do, unless they are wearing bright beach shirts that proclaim Honolulu or bust or something along those lines.

The variety of humanity is breathtaking. No two people are the same . . . except . . . they all are going someplace. They are going places in the immediate sense in that they have come into this vast cattle chute (commonly called an airport) to go somewhere and arrive at a particular destination. But they are also going somewhere in an eternal sense, willingly or unwillingly. This is where is gets dicey for most of us. That God would allow such a terrible destiny . . . even for those who did not know the particulars about either the trip nor the final stop . . . is difficult for us to put our thoughts around. But His Word makes the truth of this abundantly clear . . . all the of the 150,000 people in this airport are going somewhere, immediately and eternally.

1 comment:

Beth said...

airports and gas stations and other stops driving cross-country are very different yet very similar - people watching grounds. Who could ever be bored?