Carried Away

I work in a hospital kitchen where there’s often too much to do, and too few people to get it done, sanely and civilly. So, it’s not just the cooking appliances that can get hot. Feeling we’re understaffed is a common sensation. Lunches can be especially exasperating, with patient meals, and two distinct staff/visitor meals—the regular lunch and the lunch special—all needing to be prepared and ready to go at roughly the exact same time.

During one recent lunch, things were even more frenzied and crazy making than typical. But once the patient trays had been delivered, the staff/visitor lunches had been put out and were being devoured, and things had begun settling down, I noticed one of the lunch special sandwiches had been set aside for me, wrapped in foil, with my name on it. Despite the chaos, I was still, nonetheless, being thought of, being loved.

It can happen to any of us that life carries us away. Our world diminishes and scrunches in around us, limiting our view. We become isolated and self-absorbed, forgetting it’s not solely about us. All around us, things seem, at best, half-empty. It easily becomes a vicious cycle, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Fortunately, as Paul tells us, there is not anything, nor any combination of things, that can separate us from, stand in the way of us, being loved. And it’s not usually with grandiose gestures that love is expressed. Paraphrasing Paul, love doesn’t call attention to itself; it just is. It’s typically seen in the quiet commonplace actions, ones we would otherwise skip over, missing their subtle transcendence.

Which brings us this crucial lesson: Love is all around; we just need to open ourselves to the seeing it. The kingdom of God is, afterall, right here, right now. Heaven: It’s under our feet.

Safe Landing?

There’s a Christian aphorism that goes something like: God doesn’t promise us a smooth flight, just a safe landing. I have issues with this notion; and it’s such a broadly open metaphor. Just when is this safe landing? At the end of the journey through our current dark forest? At the end of our life? At the beginning of our eternal afterlife? Part of what vexes me, I think, is that this phrase sounds so wise and wonderfully comforting, yet winds up not meaning much of anything. Like meringue and cotton candy, it seems so richly decadent and sweet at first, yet leaves nothing to sustain a body. It also bothers me because it’s so obviously untrue. Think Dietrich Bonhoeffer; the early Christian martyr, Stephen; the persecutions leading to death of Christians (and non-Christians, too) throughout today’s world—and this is scarcely even the tip of a ginormous iceberg. They're crashes, not landings; and they’re definitely far from “safe.”

Yet, still, our God knows each and every hair of each and every one of us. The “more excellent way” of God, is love. And, to be quite certain, if God didn’t absolutely desire to deal with us, we would have been dropped ages and ages ago.

Greater minds than mine have been unable to solve this seeming discrepancy: Our omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniloving God allows us to live such impotent, distant, and hate-riddled lives. “God’s ways our not our ways,” sure. But couldn’t they be, at least once in awhile, more “godly?” Then again, as Paul says, we won’t see things clearly until later on. At the moment, things remain muddled. And it surely often escapes us the myriad ways God does indeed sublimely intervene into our lives, softening its blows. Perhaps, what God promises us is actually a safe-er landing.