Athens.
Dubai. PhotoPhoto by Aleksandar Pasaric.
If you’ve read any of my recent columns, you’ll be aware I’ve been out of the country for a while travelling through parts of Europe and the Middle East.
Stepping away from the beautiful enclave that is New Zealand, awakens insight again into just how vast and varied the world’s people groupings are.
Murray Smith
Some weeks ago, I was at Dubai Airport with my daughter Becky as we joined an unbelievable throng made up of every tribe and tongue on earth, it seemed. This huge cosmopolitan cross-road airport annually caters for 90 million passengers flying to and fro. I suspect we were treated to a particularly busy ‘session’ as we bustled our way along with bags, jostling with multiplied thousands of others, squeezing into queues, shuffling through security clearances, jammed into elevators and trains to traverse this massive complex, all to make a connection flight to our next destination.
I reflected on the swirling masses around us being like a microcosm of how our planet looks with its expressions of human diversity… the roiling sea of people from every culture and nationality cramming this vast complex was overwhelming – from Asia, the Middle East, Europe, the Americas, Africa, Pasifika naming just a few. I couldn’t help but look upon them as individuals with background stories, longings, pains and sorrows, goals, carrying varied understandings and beliefs about life.
Making our way through Greece, the Dubai airport ‘visit’ came to mind again. In the first century AD, Greece was the hotspot of bustling people groups. Paul an apostle, (that’s someone sent on a mission with an important message), arrived in Athens and was struck by the melee of religious fanaticism on display. Earlier in life as an educated, devout conservative Jewish rabbi, Paul experienced a dramatic life-changing encounter while travelling to Damascus to destroy the ‘People of the Way’ – the name for Christians who believed and followed Christ’s teachings. He’d hated those people, viewing them as opponents to Judaism and was committed to wiping them out.
Paul’s experience on this journey to destroy the truth, ended up with him encountering the truth as can only be found in Jesus. This ardent detractor’s life was upended – he became arguably the greatest advocate ever, for faith in Christ.
Years later, upon entering Athens he was grieved seeing idols and symbols of religious practice everywhere. He saw an altar with an inscription: ‘To an unknown god.’ In their blind fervour, these people had crafted an extra altar to avoid offending some deity they didn’t know of and might have overlooked.
Stirred by this, he cried out to a crowd of lost, searching people… “You are searching for an ‘unknown’ God who you are ignorant about. I’m declaring Him to you- He can be known in personal relationship with Christ, through whom this only true God has shown His love, bringing salvation to all.
Standing in Athens near where Paul delivered this message years ago, was moving. His words are no less true for every searching soul today – for you and me… for all those humans surging through Dubai Airport… they’re true for everyone.
Athens. Photo by Jimmy Teoh
