Towering

So, while in Toronto, we went with my cousin Wayne and we took the kids to the CN Tower. If you’ve been there, you know that it is really cool, and you are able to go 147 stories (1465 ft) up and look down. There is even a glass floor where you can stand as if you are standing on air and the rest of the world is far below.

Toronto is one of the biggest melting pots I have ever experienced. While we stood in line at the bottom of the tower, waiting for the elevator to take us up and away, I heard so many different languages, saw so many different skin colors and native dress, that I felt very global and cosmopolitan. A group of adults with Downs Syndrome were in line too, and one gentleman reached out to grab my hand across the ropes as I smiled at him. I marveled at us all there lined up, so different but somehow connected.

After we arrived at the top observation deck, I looked down at the world below and I could no longer make out all the differences in people or hear all the noises we make. When I was a kid, I imagined this to be God’s perspective – looking down on the world from far above in heaven – watchful over His Earth. I was always impressed that He knew so many languages and could pay attention to so much going on at once – a fact that also made me wonder if I ever got lost in the shuffle because He was such a great distance away.

Towering as I was last Friday, I had new insight into Jesus and His coming to Earth. God’s desire to connect, to join us at the bottom and touch, to jump in line and speak our language so we could understand His heart, must have been so great that He just went ahead and did it. Sometimes I think we only remember that He came to die, but oh, His arrival was multi-dimensional and multi-purposed. Frankly, His death was certainly important, but His LIFE – then and now – is the real story.

You and I are not lost in the shuffle. Is there distance between God and us? Yes, for sure. But His decision to descend, to break the glass floor, closed the gap forever. He is here and He is now and He hears your noise.