People Making Out With Each Other At Airports

I picked my buddy up at the airport tonight. Unfortunately for both of us, I had the wrong airport.

One thing you notice when you’re waiting to pick someone up – especially when you’re at the wrong airport – is a number of people who aren’t the person you are trying to pick up. Another thing you’ll notice is a bunch of kissing.

It’s amazing the number of people making out with each other at an arrival section of the airport. At first, I felt kind of voyeuristic watching all these tender moments between reunited lovers. Eventually, I wished I had some popcorn.

I always wondered which one it was between “out of sight, out of mind” and “absence makes the heart grow fonder”.  I’ve settled on a little of both. Sometimes you don’t know what you have until you don’t have it. Sometimes you don’t realize how much you missed what you had until you have it again.

Of course, sometimes you’ll never again have what you’re missing. You might have pictures and memories and vivid dreams, but it’s all a mirage – it’s never the full substance. It is at these moments of frustrated longing that you’re likely to get mad at yourself for blowing it or ashamed at having such desires in the first place. Maybe the anger is directed toward others for not coming through. Or, maybe the anger is at a disease or the passage of time. It’s often a buried rage struggling to know how to express itself. Another word for this is depression.

I suppose this all ties back to loss and potential loss. The question is what to do about it. I think two things. First: some losses can be prevented. This, I think, is by not taking things for granted and giving relationships the proper care and nurture they require. This is doing all that is in your power to realize what you have and how much you would be crushed without it. These are the cases where there is still hope.

In other cases, there is no hope. The family member who meant so much to you is dead. The woman you love is married to another man. Your failure cannot be undone. Your situation cannot be erased. There is a permanence and finality to your plight.  What do you do about these cases? How do you have hope when there is none? For that, I think you have to turn it over to the Apostle Paul from the book of Romans.*

Present Suffering and Future Glory

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our heartsknows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
    we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,neither the present nor the future,nor any powers,neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

*Romans 8: 18-39:

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