Finding God at the Airport
I love to travel. If I had a job that paid for me to fly all the time, I’d love it. I love the frenzy of the TSA line. I love how each airport looks both exactly the same and extremely different. I love the little bags of almonds. I love it all.
One of the main reasons I adore traveling, besides going to someplace new, is people-watching. I enjoy watching sleepy families, their children still in pajamas with fuzzy feet, killing time at their gate before the flight. Or I watch an attentive daughter pushing her mother in a wheelchair through the airport, stopping here and there to make sure her mother is comfortable and content.
One reason I take pleasure in all the people-watching is that these are people from all over the country. Sometimes, they are from all over the world. With our community connections becoming so small and fragmented, the airport is one of the only places that I get to witness so many people outside of my circle. These are not people who shop at my grocery store or work out at my gym. I need a bigger worldview.
I watch how the families love and care for each other: the father who goes out to get coffee for the whole crew or the grandchild who fixes the bags, just so, so his grandpa can elevate his swollen feet upon them. As I watch them love each other, it occurs to me just how much God loves each of them, just as he loves me.
Sometimes I witness hardship too. Once in the women’s bathroom, I heard a four-year-old girl pepper her mother with questions the mother was too weary to answer. “Are we going back? Are we going to see Grandma again soon? When are we going to see Daddy?”
The mother answered the questions patiently and sweetly, but it was clear something bad had happened. Either they were escaping an abusive situation, or someone had died.
As I met them out at the sinks while we all washed our hands, I said to the mother, “You are a very good mommy.” She burst into tears.
“How do you know?” she asked.
I told her I heard how patient and kind she was to her daughter. I looked in her eyes, and she knew I was reading between the lines into something her daughter could not sense.
“You will get through this,” I said, not knowing what to say but knowing I needed to say something.
She nodded in agreement. “You don’t know how much I needed to hear that.” She took my hand in hers and pressed it tightly.
Airports are a sort of liminal space, where all of humanity is pressed together—sometimes for vacations and something fun but often for funerals or moving away from home. Sometimes we are on our way to say goodbye to someone we once loved. I believe in this liminal space God meets us.
God is there, amid the conveyer belts, the fluorescent lighting, and artificial air. He wants to meet us in every worry and care. May we have eyes to see and ears to hear.