There are glass shards everywhere.
Of course there are, it’s Sunday morning. Club 27 is right down the street from my apartment, and everyone knows that it’s no party if there are not drunkenly broken bottles there the next morning. It’s a small wonder that the broom is practically a cultural icon here.
It’s Sunday morning, the Sunday after Christi Himmelfahrt (Christ’s Ascension). I don’t really understand why we celebrate that as a holiday here. Even if you do believe in it, it’s the day that Jesus left his people… flying away into the clouds. It seems sad, really, but it’s a day off and most people don’t complain about such things.
I step over the shards carefully, wondering if the next place I live is going to have this kind of party scene nearby.
Oh. There it is again.
Like a lead dumbbell on my chest, Guten Morgen, liebe Sorgen. A thousand questions start running through my head. Where am I going to live? Who with? How? How do I make sure I can stay here for the long run? How do I make this my home? When will the culture shock lighten up? What does rest look like? What was I supposed to be doing months ago to make this different?
He left them alone.
No, that’s not quite right. He left them with some words: I’ll send another.
But the “another” didn’t come right away. There was a day where the Spirit of God came in power, and rocked the world doing so. That’s Pfingsten (Pentecost), but that’s not until next week. What about the time between the two? What about the ten days where God was away?
Did they make plans, Jesus’ boys? Did they start trying to carry out everything that he talked with them about? Did they start doing what I so badly am trying to do? Were they crushed when it started going differently than they thought?
It’s hard to live in the place where you know good things are coming, but aren’t here yet. The places between promises made and promises fulfilled, the Zwischenzeiten, are full of deceptive shortcuts. And when you are stepping over glass shards and wanting more, it get’s easy to think you made a mistake along the way, that you missed your exit and are now cruising toward only God knows where.
I don’t know why God waited ten days to come back again, but He did. He left them with words of hope and a chance to have faith.
I think I’m coming to believe that it was in those things that He was present with them between flights to heaven and tongues of fire. It’s as if the negative space created by a dismissed worry or delayed gratification is full of the presence of God.
Pfingsten is coming.
Promises will be fulfilled and worlds will be changed.
Until then, I have my questions, meine Sorgen, and the chance to wait.
Still Wandering,
Tony