passenger in transit

I've travelled to probably 30 different countries in the last 20 years or so, and the inevitable experience of being "transit" is one I always dread: confined in one country in order to get to another. Security gates are closed and no visa, no amount of finagling, no pleading looks directed at the passport control officer will manage you an escape from the airport and the tedium which is about to ensue. It's just you, the contents of your carry on (which you should have paid more attention to making interesting before you left!) and the enticing eats and drinks of Duty Free...oh, and don't forget the nice toilets. For hour upon hour of riveting fun.

I liken it to the experience I seem to be having with God of late. He's got me hog-tied and in a head lock, firmly "in transit." I hate this. I hate it when I am in an airport, but metaphysical transit, oh God, help me, is another deal altogether.

I long to understand how it is I have arrived at this place in life, and I throw up a lot of questions, well...demands, to that effect and yet He devastates me with silence and protracted pauses. The one question that permeates my thinking is: is it safe to be in the hands of this God, who cuts my rope when I seem to be hanging beyond the precipice -- in thin air.

And the answer I keep coming back to, though not easily so, is yes. Somehow, as I am dangling in the void and silence, suspended only by his goodness, I feel the surge of His breath, a rushing violence of love and compassion and holiness. And, my soul and, ever so slowly, my mind believe that the love of God chooses the void and silence, pain and ache, the loss and grief -- for a time -- for my eternal blessing.

"Weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning."