The Tower

I returned from Paris recently. What an exciting trip. This was my first international travel experience, as well as my first plane ride. We saw the city, rode the metros, encountered the depressed people who all wore black and constantly smoked. Half the team caught a virus/or/food poisoning. Ate food from shops that looked like they might not pass the health code. And....ofcourse......we saw IT. The eiffel tower. You cannot imagine the size of this thing until you see it in person. We saw it during the day. We saw it lit up at night. We saw it sparkle on the hour. We saw it from a distance. We saw it from underneath. We waited in line, rode the elevator up, and took in the view from the tower. It was amazing. These words will not convey to you how awesome this thing is. We spend an incredible amount of time at the tower. We ate crepes as we walked around from across the river, waiting for 8:00 to strike and the bulbs begin to flash creating a Christmas tree affect. We dismissed vendors who tried to sell you mini-eiffel towers for 1 euro. We did it all.

One night after visiting the tower, we decided we were hungry. We scoped out a spot to get some crepes and started toward our destination. The city surrounding the Eiffel Tower area is great. It's clean. There's great places to eat. Most of the people seem to be in a good mood (because they're tourist). As you walk around the corner of the tower on your way to the metro terminal, tucked away behind this nice building is a soccer field. You can see it from the top of the tower, but most wouldn't know it was there tucked behind the other buildings. It was dark by this point and the field was bright with the color of the lights as children gathered around for practice. It was the perfect scene. I felt like I was in a movie. The field was in the shadows of the Tower. It was the perfect view. And as we walked along I wondered, "How can these people stand beneath this creation and not even be concerned? How can you carry on a game of soccer without ever glancing up at it?" And as I walked and thought about this more, it hit me. I am exactly like those kids at the soccer field. God is so big, grand, and ever-present in my life, just like the Tower was to those kids. I find myself surrounded by his presence and I constantly live beneath his shadow, but I ignore Him. Much like the locals who had seen the tower day in, and day out. I'd grown complacent about the God I love. I go about the routine of my life without even looking up to acknowledge his presence. It was a sad realization. We all know that God is big and indescribable, but when the day comes that we meet Him, the day that His Spirit moves and we meet His Son, our definition of indescribable changes. God becomes more than we could have possibly dreamed or hoped for. We become intoxicated by our new found knowledge and it seems like we'll never come down for this high. But, unfortunately, most of us do. And all to often we're content to live beneath the shadow. The kids in the park had the initial experience where they stood in awe of the tower. But now they were to the point that it didn't matter. If you asked, I'm sure they could tell you interesting things about the tower. Share memories about the fun times they'd had near the tower. But did they really know the tower? Do we really Know?