| the
almost Daily Dunker
A
Big Event
There are some events in life that are so large they transform the experience of every other event around them. Weddings can be like that. Which probably is why Jesus sometimes used Weddings to describe what the Kingdom of God is like. I was reminded of that fact over the 4th of July weekend when my 17-year old son and I were summoned from Florida to California for the Wedding of my oldest nephew. By any measurement it should have been a terrible experience. Both coming and going American Airlines was having a bad hair day. After arriving at Tampa airport two hours early Friday afternoon we sat in our plane for over an hour waiting for a procession of thunderstorms to pass through the area. By the time we made it to Miami our two hour layover before the connecting flight was down to 15 minutes. (The exact time the helpful sign at the gate said it would take us to get across the airport to the departing flight.) When we finally arrived at LAX our bags, of course, had not. So we waited around the airport for another two hours for the luggage to catch up with us. Things got worse on the return trip home Tuesday. Thirty minutes into the flight our pilot informed us the plane was returning to LAX because a hydraulic leak had been discovered in the brake system. After returning to the airport we were herded aboard another flight several hours later and sent on our way to Miami. Upon arriving in Miami the flight was delayed even more after landing because a plane in the gate we were supposed to use had broken down and needed to be towed out. After deplaning and being unable to locate anyone with information about how we were supposed to connect with another flight to Tampa I discovered, by asking another gate agent, that there was a flight we could take, the last one out until tomorrow and, by the way, we'd better run to catch it. After being delayed by no less than three stops for security checks on the way across the airport - the last one who insisted on looking through my son's traveling bag for the first time on the trip - we reached the Tampa flight gate as an impatient pilot ushered us on board the flight telling the gate agent to forget checking us in because there wasn't enough time. Of course, when we got to Tampa we found our baggage was missing. And yet driving back to Ocala late Tuesday night - without our bags - I found myself amazed that I had good feelings about our terrible trip. The reason, the experience at the Wedding. The service and wedding festivities had been held aboard the Newport Princess ( a two-deck ship designed for weddings) as it cruised for six hours in Newport Beach Harbor. Friends and family had gathered from Ireland to Hawaii for the event. And the joy and hope of one family uniting their only daughter with another family's oldest son was everywhere. All those folks on that boat are now joined and related in a way we were not before. And that kind of experience, I think, is exactly what the resurrection of Jesus Christ does for Christians. In one way it brings us into a new kind of experience that transforms all the other events in our lives, both good and bad, into opportunities for hope and joy. It also unites us in all our differences into one relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ. The media is telling us that the United States is divided this election year as few times before between conservative polarized Republicans and liberal polarized Democrats with a lot of people pulling one way or the other in between. Many of these people who have different ideas about the direction the country should be going are Christians. Perhaps this would be a good time for all we believers to remember the resurrection wedding feast we attended with Christ, so that the other events, no matter how they turn out, will not matter more to us than our love for each other and our love for our Lord.
more almost daily dunker
Falwell And Trouble In The SBC |