he who has eyes...

“He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” [Matthew 5:45]

I was recently on a plane flying from Philadelphia into sweet home Chicago. I had just finished reading Rick McKinley’s very good book called This Beautiful Mess which is about the Kingdom of God and what entirely this means (much, much more on the Kingdom of God in the coming six months — of this you can be sure!). Having finished this while on the plane, I put on my iPod and started listening to McKinley’s friend Laura Gibson and her fantastic new album Beasts of Seasons. All of this to set the stage for a quick little moment I wanted to share about the beauty and majesty and vastness of God that just seemed to find its way into my mind during the trip.

While Gibson’s strangely fitting song Sleeper found its way into my ears (click to play while reading to create the full soundtrack effect), our plane descended into the thickness of the clouds that covered my hometown. As if they would help navigate through the thick fog ahead, the wing lights of the plane turned on. While probably of little use to the pilots, the lights proved to reveal one of the more curious and awe-inspiring sights I’d seen in a very long time.

Streaks of water vapor of would-be raindrops flew past the window, creating completely horizontal lines as if to demarcate a piece of looseleaf paper upon which God could explain the poetry of the moment. As this vapor collected on the side of the plane, it eventually found its way onto my window. Once there, the stresses of the sheer speed of the air flowing past the water broke the droplets up into what simply had to be the smallest that the beads could possibly be while still being considered drops.

At first, this served only to keep me interested as one would be in staring at a screensaver while pondering all of the events that had just unfolded over the weekend and what was to come in the following week — each droplet trying as hard as it could to mimic the beauty of a shooting star or satellite. But, as more and more began to streak past, my window turned into an illuminated static of thousands of water beads, each lit up like its own little sun. No longer could my mind even fathom the individual nature of each component. All I saw was static — true, naturally-occurring static.

I got to thinking about the Kingdom of God, and how this whole planet and all of the people in it (whether they know it or not) are ultimately under the rule and reign of the most loving King we could ever hope to serve. Each life on this plane that was marveling at the same gift of beauty that God presented to us had individual desires, an individual will, and an individual path once on the ground. But, as here, ever so often God brings individuals together to see something about the nature of God collectively — and in those moments, it’s sad to me that people don’t get closer to one another, tugging at each others shirt-sleeves as if to say, “Look at this!” Instead, we all sat quietly, listening to the Laura Gibsons of our lives, and choosing to experience this corporate existence as individuals, just as we would once we landed and were back in our safe little garaged-in worlds.

I then began to think of the rain as it fell on the ground. Here I was, among the clouds, in awe of all the rain that hadn’t found its way onto the surface. Thousands of feet below me, two teenagers returning from their first date decide to forgo taking the train home and instead walk together in the rain, holding hands and creating a moment that they will remember thirty years from now when they’re both married with their own children who are on their own first dates. Somewhere several miles away, a man who can’t quite feed his family is praising God for the answer to his prayers with this rain. You see, God sent this entire weather system just to soak the ground and create an opportunity for this one man to earn money the next day, as he cleans out clogged storm-drains for a living. And next door, an old widow has her windows open, listening to the sound of each drop as it hits her balcony — each one reminding her of the rainy day when her husband of 45 years was laid to rest.

I thought of all of this and I cried at the glory of it all, letting out the same substance of life that was separated to create this whole beautiful mess to begin with.