Moments with God

The first thing I feel is the time change. Change.

“I’m glad you’re leaving, but I wish you could stay”…. these are the words of my best friend, delivered through tearful, triumphant prayer.

The flight was 6 ½ hours long, and Spain is 6 hours ahead of New York City. There is a definite time change.

The flight was turbulent and dicey, but good nonetheless. My friend and I prayed for traveling mercies, among other things. I prayed that the plane would not crash, but even if it did, I told Him I was already grateful. I said a prayer in hopeful anticipation, anxious waiting for moments where I will experience Him on this trip.

You are most certainly aware of your own mortality when you are on an aircraft. I don’t mean post-9/11 what if I have to wrestle a shoe out of someone’s hand, mortality.

I mean ascension, climbing, gaining altitude toward the heavens and watching the clouds break-peering into the eternal, brilliant spectral graze of a setting sun, as if you wandered onto God’s estate and happened into His drawing room. You are fortunate enough to be suspended there for a while; staring down at cirrus so blue you mistake their diaphanous visage for ocean. I peered around, locked amid a soundtrack of random Castilian small talk and recognized I was not the only one to marvel at His beauty, to scrutinize my own fragile mortality, to be grateful for this gift, and this moment, and all left to come.

There are always instances in life when you are washed over with the power of God’s presence and sheer awesomeness of God’s work. I remember standing dumbstruck at the bottom of a mountain, where the ocean water cascaded down into a sharp bluff in St. Elizabeth. I sat in almost perfect peace on soft, alabaster sand and tasted the spray of a wave that crested and pulled back; seemingly just for me at 3 am on Miami’s shore line. I was moved to tears over a rainbow that adorned the sky over an immense waterfall in EL Yunke. I want this trip to be filled with so many more of these moments that my heart all but explodes.

During this inceptive journey into Spain I am reminded of Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist (El Alchemista)”. The story takes place, initially, on the south coast of Spain and travels into the Muslim Africa, just a ferry ride away from where I will be going. The protagonist in the story listens to the voice of God, and heeds His omens to fulfill his personal legend. He learns that all things in the universe are one.

As the plane descends, I watch the sun rise (set and rise in an expanse of about 4 hours because of the time change). Thank God for time. And change. I thank Him for all the opportunities He has already afforded me by showing me the beauty of this world. I thank Him for what He has yet to show me, and for all I am hoping to see and experience in this new place- His place, where we, and everywhere and all things, are one.