Ten minute Tuesday finds me in the airport. O'Hare, no less, not your country runway. I first remember an airport in Ulysses, Kansas. We could see airplanes come and go about a mile away from our house. These were small Cessnas and crop dusters and such. In later years we passed the small Clay Center airport nearly every day of the week.
As an adult I lived near many airports that were large enough for jets but small enough to enjoy: WPB (in the early days), Jackson (MS), Lexington (KY), Roanoke (VA), and now Fairbanks, Alaska.
But today I am in one of the world's largest and as always I am amazed at the people. I have always loved people: variety, languages, personality. Even with the triumph of tech – nearly all the people waiting at my gate are on their phones – the differences are overwhelming and beautiful. I scarcely know what to do with it, in my understanding I mean. Changing it is the definition of impossible.
I grew up in beloved rural Kansas in a beloved church context that emphasized fundamentals. Conservative fundamentals. Ways of life and details for living that have very little obvious expression in the mass of people I see at a place like O'Hare. It is an eye-opener. And painfully wonderful in all the good, human ways.
There is the constant problem of substance and form and I am reminded we all err in different ways on this continuum. I sat next to a couple that in form seemed to violate all that many – not just a conservative fundamentalist – would find wrong. Yet they had a child they obviously loved, and they cared for one another in apparent old-fashioned ways of love and devotion. Form one way, substance tacking opposite. I decided not to ask them how that works.
And as I think about all of this I pray with a joy that bursts forth in praise for all that God has made, and for the privilege of living in this marvelous world.
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