By Mark

I like airports.  The ability to watch  planes take off and land, seeing people from literally every nation on earth make airports are amazing places.  For instance Toby was playing with a little British boy who asked Toby if he spoke English.  Toby’s reply “No, I speak American.”  This summer our family spent some time waiting and watching in several different airports.  (When I add up the layovers its more like days spent in airports).  Of course we spent a lot of time in Seoul which is one of the top-rated in the world.  (I might feel differently speaking about LAX an armpit or the Gary, Indiana of airports of the world in my opinion.)  

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It’s rather odd to watch the ebb and flow of the airport.  In a matter of moments it goes from deserted to waves of people rushing back and forth and then to deserted again.The strange thing  is that for all the people that move through an airport- for all its activity- no one lives there; airports are a wholly transient place.  Someone living in an airport is an oddity (consider Spielberg’s dud Terminal).  Think about sitting at a gate when you overhear someone talking about where they are going to put the living room and the furniture and you see them pointing to the waiting area that you are sitting in.  It would be absurd, why?  Because airports are places that we move through, they are not permanent places to live.  For as wonderful as an airport is I don’t want to stay there, I want to get to where I am traveling to. 

Here is where the gospel comes in.  The gospel tells us that the present world is real and true but its not fully what God has for us, there is something greater he has prepared for us.  

13 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.  For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
(Heb 11:13-16 ESV)

I find it interesting that every day people step onto planes going to places they have never seen or experienced before but trust in others to get them there and yet resist the reality of heaven because they cannot see it. 

As I think about lessons of the this past year I see more clearly that our time on earth is like time in an airport- brief, transient, waiting for that better destination, a heavenly one.  When I bring the gospel to bear that promise is hope and also is a challenge to how I live now.  My possessions are like the seat in the waiting area- I can’t take it with me, nor would I want to because there is something great to come.  I fear to many people who call themselves followers of Jesus live their lives as if they are trying to build a house in an airport, forgetting that their hope and what they truly seek lays ahead.