When the plane took off from LAX, careening over the Pacific and then swiveling to face the coast, I peered out the window and tried to figure out which pier sticking out over the water was the one my friends and I had stood on to watch the sunset. There were too many to tell, toothpicks against an opaque, wrinkled blue sheet. Roads faded into grids, houses into thumbnails. Everything looked so small. I thought about how all my friends and much of my family was contained in that tiny swath of land. Most of the people I interacted with over the summer―all enclosed by a plane window.
At the end of the day, as I flew over New York City, the setting sun painted the east in bright gold and orange. Warm shafts of light shot through the windows on the opposite side of the plane. My side of the plane looked out at a mixture of lilac and silvery blue, the advent of twilight. Not quite the same drama as the sunset, but beneath the milky eastern sky, the city was vast and dark and beautiful. Glorious, in its own way.
And a little frightening. Whereas Los Angeles looked small―or at least, the houses and the streets and the beaches looked tiny―the glittering lights of New York sprawled into the distance. So many bridges that I could not identify. Coastlines that felt unfamiliar. Were we flying over Manhattan now? Or Queens? I could not tell. The city felt too big. A bit of dread crept back into my mind. I began to miss the simplicity of my hometown, where stores close at eight o’clock and I know the streets like I know the aisles of our closest Target.
New York cannot be home. It is too big to wrap my arms around. And yet―and yet. Two truths brought me comfort in that moment.
First: as glorious and frightening as New York is in its vastness, density, and grandeur, God is infinitely more glorious and infinitely more worthy of fear and awe. This place that I cannot see the end of is less than a grain of sand, indeed, smaller than an atom compared to our God. He is great beyond all else. The universe is a peanut in his pocket. And even that is an understatement. If this tiny, manmade, temporary city could seem glorious to me, how much more the eternal God?
Second: God has lavished on his church a magnificent role in redemptive history. I had just finished Ephesians in my Bible reading plan, and I was struck by the honor given to the church as Christ’s body (1:23), the household of God (2:19), a holy temple in the Lord (2:21), and a dwelling place for God (2:22). Most of all, as Paul explains, he was charged with preaching the gospel to the Gentiles so that “through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (3:10). Through the church the very wisdom of God is revealed. Through the church God’s wisdom is shown to “rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”
As I surveyed the city below me, wide and tall, both shadowy and glowing, I considered also the hidden glory of the church. My church in New York, First Baptist, is a small congregation, under two hundred, contained in one building. Most of the members know each other, at least by name. We are barely a speck on a map, perhaps notable for our building, perhaps known by other churches or pastors, but hardly a felt presence throughout the whole of Manhattan or New York City. Still, this little local church is a part of God’s glorious plan to make known his wisdom to spiritual beings in the heavenly places. It is a weighty privilege to be a member of the local body.
The thought of my church brought me more comfort in that moment than any other. I doubt I will ever be able to regard New York as home. But I do think this church feels most like home. For home is supposed to be stable, safe, and constant, and the church is all of these―not perfectly, of course, and not because of the excellence or goodness of its members, but because of the riches of glory given by Christ to his church, whom he is sanctifying to be his bride.
Over the last year, I have been thinking about the changeability of place and time, the ache of distance, the fear of flowing time. There is something about planes that sharpens these feelings: maybe the limbo-like suspension of being nowhere, maybe the consciousness that I am in flux from one time zone and coast to another. Usually I feel quite somber, having dwelt on the woes of distance and separation to a degree inappropriate for a college student who will return home in just four quick months. (Forgive the melodrama.) But this time, on this flight, I remembered the church. I remembered that I am a member of a household that spans time and space. Regardless of when or where I end up, the church, at its core, will be the same: perhaps small, perhaps humble, but always upheld in Christ.