On the cruise ship vacation not so long ago, a makeshift chorale of passengers sung ‘Imagine’ as melodically as a church choir. Only, it was a chorale extolling the virtues of there being “above us only sky” and “no religion, too”—as though they might sing it in a hospital terminal word with the assurance it would bring comfort to ones in their final hours. I mean, only atheists can be so oblivious to what is meaningful in life.
Then there was the frustrated foreign ticket taker who kept saying “Turn, please. Turn. Excuse me, turn!!” and I did keep turning the ticket, but it made no difference to the stupid machine. Now, had she said “Turn over” or “flip” I would have known that I had to do it opposite to the last scanner encountered. (Alas, I snapped at her a little, a rare lapse of politeness that suggests it is back to Bible 101 for me.)
I’ll tell you one thing. I’d rather look out my airplane windows and see the Twilight Zone monster that terrified young William Shatner than I would seeing the horrific (but necessary) labyrinth of lines and security personnel and scanners one must navigate at international airports.
It’s a little gimmicky, but you can walk into a Bethel and someone may ask you what you notice about the world map displayed overhead. Or the globe in the lobby, should there be one. The answer is that there are no borders, a fore-glimmer of the new system to come. Add to the signs of the times that scream “Last Days!!!” the fact that when I was a boy, you could board a plane with no more fuss than boarding a train. Buy a ticket and hop onboard.
We had many adventures during that cruise. Chief of all takeaways is the realization that, while the earth is round, it shouldn’t be. I know very well that the earth is round. I know it. At no time have Jehovah’s Witnesses been among the intelligentsia who supposed it was flat. But it should be flat! What was God thinking? It should be flat with all sunlight illuminating all surfaces at once. That way there’d be no such thing as jet lag.
****** The bookstore
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