“Every once in a while, people need to be in the presence of things that are really far away.“Ian Frazier, Staffer @ The New Yorker.

WordPress #Discover Prompt- Distance.

I had 2 planes to reach Amsterdam, it felt far, very far from home. I was still young enough to be that scared. This is a strange story, but here it is. It was a work assignment, I was newly married, my insides were a knot of king-sized butterflies. Jeff said,“Go Ray, but come back soon!” He was (is) never one to stop me from something that needed to be done.

My Ma had opened her Corrie Ten Boom daily Devotions, “Let’s see what it says,” she gave me her serious bright-eyed look, which dared me to go against ‘God’s plan’. And what did her reading say? “When God asks you to take a flight to another country, do not disobey…“

Startled, dazed, I had tried arguing (lamely) about not having enough warm wear, that I hated airplanes, heights, that all this was so far away…..

“Far from where???” Dad asked.

I still flounder at that question.

Which is the Centre of our existence? A place called home is what we are….where?

I took that flight: KLM from Delhi to Schiphol airport and the Rai Centre where 180+ country delegates met for a Billy Graham Conference. No, I have no nice picture with the legendary preacher, but I bumped into him without warning one morning on my way to the media centre. He peered down at my badge (& skinny, short-haired self, ‘pint-sized‘ some called me affectionately), and grinned, “You beautiful person from India… welcome!”

I stammered and tried to hug him back, those big butterflies in my tummy were in my ears. To this day I do not remember much about that encounter except his kind smile and a sense of the divine all around his humble daddy- eyes glowing with joy. It got me. I lost nervousness, the tummy cramp vanished, got talking to the wonderful people there, it changed me, still changes me to know there is no distance too far on earth: that the one environment that matters is what’s in on the inside. I needed to go that far to get familiar with my Core, that unshakable kingdom within.

It still changes me constantly–

to realise that Change is one Certainty we best come to terms with, and that we were born better than every other Species alive, hence we are engineered to cope. We are better than we know, because the centre of the Universe is within, via a providentially structured mind.

Now and then a certain Separation/ Distancing reminds us: here is nothing (except us) that can dare separate us from the purpose for which we were brought this far; and that it might take a few mountains to know we are trekkers. Take a few oceans to know we love the deep …. take a bit of hell to know there is heaven…

1. There is little we cannot really adapt to.

2. There is nothing as powered as the human spirit that knows the Love of God.

3. WHAT LIES between the things we once knew and what we can become no matter the odds?

We’ve been through the Ugh and Other moments. Did we think a virus could make us stronger? Yes, it has! Vulnerable? Yes. And that’s a good place to look within. Ask me how I know.

Don’t you think we are made for more than the Familiar:

distancing….from what?

My time in the Netherlands stoked this appetite for challenges, it made me peer within to find a spirit that responded best to the joy of knowing God as my one Anchor, against all odds. I would meet Christ in so many different ways and all of them weren’t ‘happy’ places: thankyou Lord!