Awareness

I still have not gotten used to being able to take a regularly scheduled half way around the world.  Singapore Airlines flights 21 and 22 continuously the world riding the prevailing winds and polar routes to link New York and Singapore in a single step for anyone willing to take the ride.  The eighteen plus or minus hour flight is not for the anxious, yet it does bring a recurring awareness to anyone willing to listen. 
 
I know the pilots and airline staff carefully plan our route, anticipating the unexpected.  They monitor the preparation process, ensuring enough fuel is on board, engineers perform a detailed examine of each engine, and that each step has sufficient time so that it is completed properly.  Even the take-off process is an exercise in patience.  We are a slow, heavy, and lumbering demonstration of man’s ingenuity. 
 
Today, as we race northwards towards the polar cap, there are the usual pockets of turbulent air.  The difference for me is the awareness of being a long way from those I love.  I want to find comfort, but across the northern stretches of Canada, bleak unending white of the pole, and the bleak landscape of Serbia, everything seems vulnerable, fragile, and illusive.  I find myself hearing an old warning in new ways.  “Two things are going to hit you both at once, suddenly, on the same day: Spouse and children gone, a total loss, despite your many enchantments and charms.”  (Isaiah 47.9)  Everything rests in this moment.  It is fleeting yet eternal.
 
Even with the busyness that comes with landing and the demands at hand, I find myself aware of my love for those who are often distant.  God, the girls, and the sense of being part of a family top the list.  It is an awareness that both comforts and tears.  It is an acute pain and comfort.  It is a statement of fear and hope.
 
You and I are part of a great family.  God is at the center.  In every place, time, or circumstance I know this to be truth.