At the airport in Madrid, the day we were leaving, I noticed a young man lying on the floor squeezed in behind a pillar facing the wall. He was dirty, disheveled, and asleep, with a small, tattered bag for a pillow. It dawned on me I had seen the same boy in the same state but in a different part of the airport when we had arrived two weeks earlier. He must live at the airport. At that moment, it struck me that in all my reality of validation of my worth in Christ’s love, it was no more or less than the validation of worth this young man had in Christ’s love for him. We were equal in the sight of our Lord. I had an overwhelming sense of knowing, of wonder, of the reality of life as I quickly passed him in my other reality of trying to navigate all the systems of a foreign airport to allow me to go from there to my plane and ultimately to America. It was the moment of juxtaposing my two realities, one harried and rushed, one stark, clear, and the truer of the two. I write this because our trip, my lover and I, was a grand reality of our relationship with God, with beauty, in an overwhelming variety of experiences. But at that moment in the airport, I realized the reality of this young man and me over the preceding two weeks was the same, two children being kept by God who would someday stand before Him to give an account. It was a spark of meaning like the flash of lightning. I said a brief prayer for him and rushed on in my other reality.
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| Landed in Knoxville, hard rode, and put up wet but good to be home. |
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