Walking the Halls

A few weeks ago, in chapel here at Taylor University Fort Wayne, someone on the platform made a comment, which I can only vaguely paraphrase right now, about how we would be talking to God, singing to God, listening to God . . . we were coming into the presence of the throne of the Lord. My mind immediately wandered for some reason back to when I took Jordan to Washington DC during his sixth grade year.

We had an appointment to get a tour of the Capitol and so we went to one of the congressional office buildings. We quickly made our way through security and then had time to kill. We walked up and down the halls, past offices adorned with state flags and name plates for people like Kennedy, Clinton, McCain, McConnell.

It hit me hard and I put my arm around his shoulder and said something like, "Do you realize what an amazing privilege this is? Here we are, just two nobodies from Oregon, and we're walking in the literal halls of power. We can walk right into Hillary Clinton's office! Now, we probably won't get to talk to her if we do, but they'll be polite, they'll listen to us! They won't kick us out or sound an alarm; we can walk right in." I don't know that there are too many places in this world where ordinary citizens can access national leaders so readily.

I sat in chapel and compared that with another amazing privilege we have. Sure, we can make an appointment to talk to our senator and drive to Washington DC and enter the Russell Building to meet with him or her, and that's pretty cool. But even more amazing is the fact that we can actually walk to the throne of the eternal, almighty God whenever we want! If I'm impressed at getting to spend 30 minutes with Congressman Greg Walden, how much more should I be impressed at getting to spend 30 minutes with God?! Yet I can certainly tell you which experience I take more for granted and which one I get more excited about.