Flight Availability

It actually happens – you hear about it happening to others but ……

I’ve been to Belfast on a conference today with some mates, but on the return flight we’d been split up all over the plane and I found myself sitting next to a guy about my age, who sells computer chips for Intel. As a closet techie this was heaven as I picked his brain about dual core, quad core, 64 bit Vista, and the office atmosphere when Intel picked up the contract to supply Apple with chips for their new computers (“The Apple freaks have nothing to rail against anymore – they’re part of the establishment now! You have to imagine all those geeks going to their analysts and saying they’re seriously conflicted!”) . Then the inevitable question came.

“So what do you do?”

I don’t go by plane to many conferences, so unlike many ministers I know I don’t have bucket loads of stories about sharing my faith with complete strangers at 30,000 feet, because on those occasions I am on a plane I’m usually reading a novel, which is a travellers way of saying that they are unavailable for conversation. It’s making a choice to be detached. The last time I did have an opportunity to do this, on a plane between Amsterdam and Detroit a couple of years back, I bottled it and hid behind a book. But what the heck – I’ve decided to throw myself at stuff remember?

So I confessed. I am a Pastor. Then I spent the next twenty minutes sharing the Gospel story, to a bright, intelligent guy. He was looking for something, but wasn’t quite able to articulate what it was: “Except that there must be something more to life than this. There’s something out there bigger than us.” We talked about God’s perfection, being perfectly loving, perfectly good and perfectly just, and how God made us, by breathing life into Adam, in his image.

“But wait a minute – if God made us like him, then how come there’s so much wrong with each other?”

I told him that when Adam and Eve took the fruit in the Garden of Eden it corrupted that image, ruining its perfection, in the same way that a virus might corrupt your hard drive. This affects all of us. None of us are perfect anymore. If God is 100, we might be 70 – 80 or so, quite good, but there’s still a gap between us and God. We talked about how God wasn’t happy with this, and needed to do something to repair the damage. Jesus, by coming to earth, sacrificing his life, and rising again, made up the difference. By the time the plane landed we’d talked about the story of Eden, Jesus’ mission, and the new community God wants to form after the second coming – a city, with a garden and a tree in its centre. And then the plane landed.

What I find is that God works in blatantly obvious ways. If I’d been sitting next to one of my mates we would have been talking about church stuff. Instead sitting next to the guy on the plane I found myself doing church stuff. I don’t know if I’ll ever meet this guy again, I don’t know if he’s any closer to God in his heart than when I sat down next to him – he was in my seat at the window by the way – but I do know this: next time I book a flight to a conference I’m going to check my availability.

You care if you're there!

A few days ago my sister in law gave birth to a healthy baby boy. She was thrilled, her husband was left speechless for several days, and it made me an uncle for the first time – quite an event in our family. But though we’re all very happy with this I feel a little bit detached from it all.

Sometimes I wonder if this is a little like us and God – things happen, but very often we feel detached from them all. We understand why its important, or exciting, or frightening, or concerning, we can even see why someone who was there, or involved can feel so passionately about it, yet we can’t feel the same way. We feel a bit empty, unexcited, passionless, maybe even a bit of a fraud.

I read a passage in Nehemiah the other day which reminded me of this feeling. Some family of Nehemiah bring him news that the walls of God’s city, Jerusalem, have been burned down. Now Nehemiah lives hundreds of miles away: for him it could be like hearing that your friend’s auntie’s budgie has flu, a bit sad, but you know, what can be done about it?

But that’s not his reaction. The Bible tells us “When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.” (Neh 1:4).

He cares. The reputation of his people and his God are on the line. There’s no way he can just shrug his shoulders and go “bummer”. It’s too important, it means too much to him. He has to do something! So he wrestles in prayer and pro-actively looks for a way he can get involved.

I’m really pleased with my new nephew, but the news cannot compare with the moment I held one of my boys for the first time. Those were exciting, passion filled, life changing moments. There’s no emptiness or faking it when I speak about them. There’s no limit to how much I’ll care about them.

Tonight I saw Bono on the news talking about AIDS in Africa. He’s there – he cares. Last year I heard Jackie Pullinger speak about the poor she works with. She’s there – she cares. You can understand why something’s important if you’re far away. But if you experience something close up, then you really care!

So here’s what I’m taking from Nehemiah. Next time I’m feeling a bit detached from God, a bit empty or passionless about the mission of the Church, then I’m going to get involved. I’m not going to mope about in self-pity. I’m not even going to spend anytime beating myself up about being a fraud. I’m going to throw myself at an aspect of our ministry, I’m going to involve myself in the lives of the people the church works with, face to face, heart to heart, until I feel their pain, hurt, or emptiness. Until God shows me how much they mean to him, and the Spirit has broken my heart for them. Because then I’ll be involved. Then I’ll be there. Then I’ll care.

Because the Gospel is just too important to shrug your shoulders over.