You might say I had a God-moment as we ascended several thousand feet and I watched skyscrapers, forests and housing developments become as small as dust on paper. The ocean was in the distance and I couldn't tell where it met the sky, as if it didn't even matter that one was water and one was air. Occasionally I could pick out a backyard swimming pool or a miniature semi but to see any detail--a person, house or street--was unthinkable. I kept wondering, "I'm only 3,000 feet up. How far does the sky go? When does the universe stop?"
It almost seemed like a big joke. The importance of the world, my position in it, the money I have, the things I want, the places I go, the emphasis put on having things and titles...it was all a giant deception, a lifelong farse. As I kept my face plastered to the window I saw businesses that must've taken generations to develop and they appeared as a pebble with a driveway the size of a single hair. There were neighborhoods crowded with houses and I couldn't tell which ones were mansions and which ones were shacks. The cars were like germs, none of them particular in color, none of them bigger or smaller, none of them faster or slower. The ball parks and factories and bridges and farms...everything man has strove for and invested time, money and effort into...it was all smaller than a speck and soon faded out of view.
I sat back in my seat and clouds took over the scene. I've read the scriptures about being eternally minded and not focusing on the things in the world, but the memory of the whole earth looking so insignificant burned those verses into my brain. I could spend my entire life building a reputation or investing in the stock market or working overtime to afford a palace. I could become famous for helping the environment, becoming a celebrity, taking a horse to the world show or founding a company. I could own the biggest property in town, have the fastest car and employ the most people. But it only takes a quick, inexpensive ride in an airplane to see how useless all of that is. It amounts to nothing. Just a molecule in a world full of miniscule people.
I was holding baby Robin when we made it above the clouds. She soon fell asleep and I cuddled her and asked God how man’s enterprises could be so inconsequential, and yet a single child could be so important? If Robin were on the earth while I was looking through my airplane window I wouldn’t even be able to see her. And yet, I care about every detail of her babyish life--from her her first steps to her giggles, tears, diapers, diet, emotions, bedtime, future and past. I care where she goes and what she believes, how she feels and when she grows up. I know the love I have for Robin wouldn’t even come close to hitting the scale in comparison of what God feels toward her. How can she be so small, and yet so inexplicably priceless?
I can't understand the mind of God in the way He cares for people. It's completely beyond mortal comprehension. It's recklessly preposterous--it's almost laughable. To think that He not only knows, but cares for, invests all of His time in, cherishes and whole-heartedly loves every microscopic human out my airplane window is ridiculously extravagant. What kind of God is capable of that? Even more, what kind of God has His heart wrapped up solely in us?
It'd be an understatement to say that I felt small when I joined the rest of the human race on the ground. Walking out of the terminal at the Denver airport I witnessed a bustling city full of shops and restaurants and crowds and crowds of people. From my sky view they would've been invisible inside a minute building; yet every one has a life so complicated and unique even if I studied them for a lifetime I wouldn't be able to scratch the surface of their depth. God knows...intimately knows...every one. He has sacrificed everything He has to be close to the ones He loves, making even my smallest investment into humankind eternally significant.
At the end of the day, with the world and its contents in proper proportion, I had a refreshed idea of what really matters. If I made a list of the things in my life that are worth investing in, on every line would be written a name. A person.
Everything else is, at best, an absurd waste of time.
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son..."
John 3:16
