Reality...

I put my oldest daughter on a plane for Israel.  Actually, I put her on a sidewalk, trusting that she could get herself to the gate because one can no longer be in the airport as a spectator.  Somehow that last good-bye on a sidewalk with the car running and security staring to be sure you don't stay one minute longer than necessary just is not the same.  But I digress...

She was reading me her itinerary.  Tel Aviv, Galilee, Nazareth, Mt. of Olives, Dead Sea, Qumran, Bethlehem.  The experience was a bit surreal.  Suddently, I am thinking these places are real...like really real.  Now that shouldn't surprise me.  I know the places are real.  I know Jesus was real.  I see the reality in the lives of the characters in the biblical story.  But I forget the place is real.

It's not just biblical.  Every time you visit a new place, the "real-ness" of the people and situations permeate your psyche and suddenly they are friends and not "those people."  Those "worthless" D.C. homeless people became flesh and blood and we understood the extraordinary difficulty of their circumstances and how close we were to being in the same situation.  Elderly folks living on Social Security after having worked their entire lives were losing the houses they paid $19K for...houses now worth half a million dollars swallowing most of their income to pay property taxes.

I think it is pretty cool that my daughter will have a perspective on scripture that her mom has never had. It will be "real" in a way that cannot be argued.  God exists...always has.  But this "realness" in Jesus brings us to a new place, a new way of relating, a new understanding of what God wants from and with us.

Being Christian is not an abstract endeavor, though I think we sometimes like it there because abstract thought is never as demanding as real life and real relationship.  I'm going to try and remember that...