Years ago, I was flying through through Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C. Well, not exactly through. We were stuck. Bad weather resulted in the cancellation of the return flight to Knoxville. We were going to have to spend the night in the airport.

Trust me when I say no one was enjoying life right then! We would all have loved to be happy and overflowing with the joys of life, but we were stuck and what can you say about that? Well, one woman was saying a lot about it. She was virtually accosting the airline people with the fact that she needed to get back to Knoxville, and that she knew there were other airlines flying out, and that the Knoxville flight was being singled out for poor treatment because they hate Tennessee just like they cheated Peyton Manning out of the Heisman Trophy back in 1997!

Where did THAT come from?

Now I am certain this lady would have loved to be enjoying the beautiful life God had given her, BUT THIS AIRLINE HAD MADE HER MAD!

After listening a while to her tirade, I crept away from that angry confrontation. Sulking about being stuck in airline hell, I went and hid in the baggage claim. I found an empty wall to slump against and started thinking about the whole situation.

And that’s when God inspired a thought.

“Marty,” God said in that deep voice that sounds like Morgan Freeman.

“Don’t be like her! “

“Enjoy this moment!”

“I’ve created it for you.”

“It’s my gift to you.”

“Live into it!”

When God, pretending to be Morgan Freeman, finished speaking, it struck me how misguided it was to think, “I want to be enjoying this moment of life BUT I AM STUCK IN A FREAKING BAGGAGE CLAIM FOR THE NIGHT.”

The better and truer thought to embrace was, “I want to enjoy the life God has given me in this moment, AND I HAPPEN TO BE STUCK IN AN AIRPORT BAGGAGE CLAIM FOR THE NIGHT, so…

… I’m just going to have to make it work!”

And suddenly, being stuck in a baggage claim was no longer a reason to NOT enjoy life. It was simply the circumstance within which my life was to be LIVED!

And there was a lot of life to be found!

That night, I started noticing people – all kinds of people – who also were stranded.

There was the very, very old couple. He was all bent over and clearly in pain. And she, with her obviously arthritic hands, was lovingly massaging his shoulders. I saw looks of a lifetime of love passing between them. What a beautiful thing to witness!

There was the family with two little twin girls who were under a blanket they had formed into a tent. They were laughing and giggling. One of them peeked out at her dad and said, “This so much fun! We’re going to stay awake all night long!” Those two little girls sparked memories of my own childhood and how adventure can be found in virtually any experience. And you can make a tent out of just about anything! What a gift!

Then there were the two middle-aged men reclining in uncomfortable chairs, heads thrown back, sound asleep. One had a magazine over his face and when he snored the pages ruffled. The other wore a Lone Ranger mask to block out the harsh fluorescent light. The sight of them made me laugh out loud, and I took a picture and uploaded it to Facebook. Some of my insomniac friends LOL’d too!

A little old lady was sitting all alone, sobbing. She spoke not a word of English, and I’m guessing she had flown in from one of the islands because she spoke French. No one could understand her language, but everyone understood her tears. Well, I know a little French – un peu – and was able to ascertain that her daughter was supposed to meet her but hadn’t come. She told me the daughter’s name. The security guards made some calls and moments later the daughter came running through the door, rushing to embrace her mom. It was a beautiful moment of reunion. Tears of joy freely flowed between them! The security guards sobbed too. The mom had somehow wandered into the wrong area of the terminal. But now everything was okay. Mother and daughter walked away, arm-in-arm, babbling excitedly in French. I wiped away a tear, also. It felt really good to have witnessed such a touching moment.

God is so good and life is so rich!

And then, in the wee-wee hours of the morning, an old cleaning lady carrying a yellow bucket came trudging along. She limped over to a baggage carousel and went to work, scrubbing the conveyor until it was spotless. And then she did something amazing. Struggling to pull herself up, she crawled onto the conveyer, stood up on it, pushed a hidden button, and started it up! And around the carousel she spun like a child on a merry-go-round, holding her dust rag on the top frame of the contraption, automatically cleaning parts that you and I would never see! What inventiveness! What devotion! What a beautiful sight!

Turns out I enjoyed all the life I saw that night!

What a gift it is that God gives us all these moments of our lives and invites us to live into them! Each one is layered with the unending fabric of creation just waiting for us to come and discover!

The next morning, our flight to Knoxville finally boarded. The angry woman from the night before was still fuming and carrying on about how she was going to write the President of the airline and give him a piece of her mind. What a shame she lost twelve hours of life’s rich abundance by devoting herself to the anger of her misfortune rather than living into the beauty of the moment God had given us all that night.

I think God, pretending to be Morgan Freeman, was right.

Every moment IS a gift, overflowing with infinite grace.

So live into the moment you have been given!

It’s richer and deeper than you can even imagine!

_____

(This story about being stranded at Dulles Airport was included in a sermon I preached in 2010. If you are interested in a sermon context you’ll find it here.