This morning I roused my poor brother up before five a.m. to take me to the San Francisco airport--one day after my wife had made the return trip and left me behind due to unfortunate tummy issues that I shall spare you details on.
I checked in behind three obviously Muslim men, all three in their twenties. And I must confess, they made me nervous...and then, being the enlightened white guy that I am, I cursed my nervousness and tried to talk myself out of it.
I followed behind them as they went through security. I was relieved to see them get singled out for more advanced and thorough security checks--and then, again, being the enlightened white guy that I am, I scolded my internal fearful self and tried to talk myself out of celebrating racial profiling.
They were shortly ahead of me and then stopped at A21--the same gate I was headed towards. We were going to/through Chicago Midway together.
As I set up shop a short ways away to wait for our plane, I took inventory of the people around us. I wasn't the only one who was looking. An older white guy glared at the three men. A middle-aged woman was visibly concerned. There were plenty of other anxious looks in their direction.
I started to wonder what it's like to be these guys as they move through an airport. They probably expect to be singled out by security and stared at by fellow passengers. There are perhaps thousands, maybe tens of thousands Muslims who fly through U.S. airports every day. How many have nefarious intentions?
But that's not enough, is it? Crunching numbers and running statistics aren't enough to change our hearts. When we feel threatened or nervous or anxious, all the best reasoning in the world does not quiet the ways that we respond to one another in fear or defensiveness or hostility or anger.
This is why education is necessary but not sufficient. Education cannot change us at the level where we need true transformation.
Sunday at my brother's house church, we read a prayer together, asking God to deal with and silence our own darkness. And therein lies our hope. We cannot, by our own measly will-power, silence our darkness. Only God can do this by His Spirit.
Our attempts at New Year's resolution will-power change usually last us through about mid-February. But God has come. And he has promised to take up residence in our hearts and to change us with his power. God has not come to simply castigate us further for our inability to change ourselves, as is sometimes believed about Christianity.
Rather, God has come in Jesus because of our inability to change ourselves. And so we find hope for change not in our ability to reform ourselves but in that prayer I prayed on Sunday: Lord Jesus, quiet my darkness.
We all made it safely through to Chicago. I prayed tonight for forgiveness and for the quieting of my darkness by God's power. It's my only hope for real change. I must participate, ask for it, but only God can actually do the hard work in me that needs to be done.
And in the mean time, I am still dealing with one casualty of my trip through Midway. If anyone happens to stumble across a bright red LL Bean rolling duffel bag somewhere between Chicago-land and Raleigh/Durham, please direct it my way.
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