Like, yet not like

Yesterday's travels took me over Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and finally into India. From 33,000 feet, most of those countries look like flying over Kansas or Nebraska (until the desert parts--which sort of looked like the Nebraska sand hills). And once it became dark, Lahore, Pakistan looked like any mid-sized American city. This morning I attended the Delhi International Christian Fellowship with a colleague from work. I met people from many different countries, but we were all able to worship the same God at the same time in the same room--with a BGC lead pastor who is from Minneapolis.

At the same time, the differences are so easy to see. I walked around a bit this afternoon in a mall close to where I am staying and I understood very little of what was being said around me. Some of the products in the stores I recognized, but most of the names were unfamiliar. And the traffic. Reminds me of the Philippines with all sorts of vehicles operating in a seeming disorderly hodgepodge of cylinders. Yet most of the time everyone gets where they are going without incident.

I wonder how much of getting along with people is a matter of choosing to see more of the similarities than the differences? I am not so naive as to think that this is the answer to all of the world's problems, but if we were to make more consistent and deeper attempts to see life through the eyes of the other, I wonder if we would see ourselves as more alike after all.

Pressing On!