A Seat in Business Class

Preparing to board an Emirates flight out of Dubai International Airport, the check-in assistant inquired, "Excuse me, sir. May we move you from your window seat?" Assuming an aisle seat was in my destiny, I agreed, only for her to reveal that it was, instead, a middle seat. At this point, I was boarding my fourth flight on a fifty-one hour journey. Slightly frustrated and fatigued, I suggested this was not ideal due to my 189cm (6'2) frame. She responded, "What if the middle seat is in Business Class?" I consented.

As I enjoyed the spacious legroom, plush seats, fine dining, and top-notch service of Emirates Business Class, my mind drifted to that window seat in Economy. In life, how often are we unwilling to let go of the insignificant when God desires to pour out His extravagant love on us? We wallow in the slums of sin, mediocrity, and self-pity, seeking appeasement in other's pain, the maintenance of the status quo, or the pursuit of self-promotion--all at the expense of finding excellence. We so quickly forget Jesus' mission in coming to earth was to give us life, and life more abundantly. (John 10:10)

Let us not, however, buy into the false assumption that this "abundant life" is packaged by material wealth. Perhaps, in fact, that is very opposite of the truth, for life's extravagances often keep us from acknowledging our need for God's grace and love. Rather, true abundance is discovered in finding the purpose and meaning of life; that we have been created for far more than simple food or clothing. (Luke 12:23) Indeed, our hearts are wrapped with the very threads of the eternal. (Ecclesiastes 3:11) The abundance God wants to give us through Jesus is the opportunity to know Him, to love Him, to live with Him forever. To know Him as creator, as our lover, as our God. It is in this relationship that the words are fulfilled, "Now this is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent." (John 17:3)

The greatest sacrifice is found, not in following Jesus, but in rejecting Him. For in the former, you may, at times, bypass certain temporal pleasures or abdicate earthly honors, yet the latter offers no promises but in this present world. Jim Elliot succinctly encapsulated this principle in his famous statement. "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."

David Livingston, the Scottish missionary and world-reknown explorer of Africa, also expressed this eternal perspective beautifully as he addressed the student body of Cambridge University in 1857. Livingston commented,"People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa...Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink, but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in, and for, us. I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk, when we remember the great sacrifice which HE [Jesus] made who left His Father's throne on high to give Himself for us."

May God open our eternal eyes so that we would not squander the gift of life on earth's fleeting gratifications. Rather, may we find the fulfillment and abundance of life through knowing the very Author of Life." (Acts 3:15)

Are we content to continue clinging to our window-seat in Economy when we are being offered Business Class?