He Knows Our Name
Kevin! Fly the friendly skies with him!
October 23
Chapter Two of the Jonah study is titled “On the Run”. Whew, that is what I was as I traveled
from Minneapolis back to Moneta yesterday. The flight out of Minneapolis was delayed almost two
hours. I had 12 minutes in Chicago
to get from one terminal by shuttle bus to another terminal. Fortunately, the second flight was
delayed 2 hours as well, but during the wait it changed gates three times! Should have worn my tennis shoes and not the cute ones that have left me with blisters on both feet.
Flying into Roanoke,VA you are usually on
what I call a “puddle jumper” and you fly out of gates, which have flights A,
B, C, & D leaving from that one gate.
It was a mad house at O'Hara. There
were no seats available in the gate area, as there were 8 -12 flights waiting to leave
in that two hour period. Many
people did not speak English and the announcements were very hard to hear. Eventually, I found a seat, but sat for
over an hour and watched a tired frazzled tyrant of a gate agent treat customers very
abruptly and without any sensitivity to their plight. Two young mothers, who
did not speak English, missed their standby seats because this woman brushed
them off telling them they should have picked up their boarding passes at the podium. Podium was not in their vocabulary for sure. The looks on their faces were so forlorn. Another young mother of three came to check on her flight to told it had already gone. She said, "You told me it would leave at 4:30. It is only 3:30." "Well, you shouldn't have left!" was the reply she received. The mother burst into tears. A security guard took pity on her and showed her the way to customer service. One rather timid young man, who was a
flight attendant flying standby, asked the agent for her name (her name tag was clipped on backwards and you couldn't see her name) and she refused
to give it to him. He said, “I
will not be intimidated by you.”
Then she barked, “You better get on that flight now!”
It was making me sick to my stomach watching people being treated this way, but like Jonah... I didn't want to be involved. Reflecting on a conversation with my son this past weekend, I felt the right thing
was to talk to a supervisor. This
woman needed to either pull a BC from her back pocket or go home. The supervisor took her to a private
area and spoke to her, but obviously identified me as the “complainer”. This woman walked over, got in my face
and said, “Nice job lady” as she proceeded to walk off. I stood up and followed her and kindly said, “I have been sitting here for
over an hour praying for the Lord to help you with your stress level, so you would be kind to people.”
She walked off and never turned back.
Finally, boarding my flight, which fortunately had a different agent, the cutest flight attendant came across the P.A. system and said, “I y'all I am Kevin. What a day this has been y’all! I promise we are going to get y'all safely to Roanoke. I want you to
sit back and relax and let me know how I can make your trip more pleasant. Remember, my name is Kevin!” Then this young fellow went on to
say he had not eaten all day and had grabbed a burger and to excuse him while
we took off he was going to devour his meal.
Pulling out a scripture card with 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, I
scribbled…”You are a breath of fresh air.” I also put my email address and told him he had won a free
weekend at Shiloh!
We need to live lives where we are not ashamed to give
someone our name. Jonah knew God
knew his name. He knew he couldn’t
hide from God, yet he high tailed it 2,000 miles in the wrong direction to avoid the task to which God was calling him.
Where can I go from
Your Spirit? Or where can I flee
from Your presence? Psalm 139:7
“I am all around you, hovering over you even as you seek My
Face. I am nearer than you dare
believe, closer than the air you breathe.
If My children could only recognize My Presence, they would never feel
lonely again. I know every thought
before you think it, every word before you speak it. My Presence impinges on your innermost being. Can you see the absurdity of trying to
hide anything from Me? You can
easily deceive other people and even yourself: but I can read you like an open,
large-print book."
He knows our name! And He knows where we need to be...in obedience to Him.
After a long day, it was good to see the mountains of home!
