Since I came to Saskatchewan, watching the weather channel on TV in the early morning has become a habit before beginning a new day. Nowadays the weather is so changeable and unpredictable that it is hard to believe the long range weather forecast. So it has become my habit not to trust the weather forecast that for more than two days. Someone told me that in the long range forecast, the bad weather predictions are usually correct but the good ones seldom are. Thus depending on modern technology and knowledge to make a future plan of our life can sometimes seem to make people become more focused on short range things rather than long range goals. It is a great irony. Indeed we are living now in a very interesting and strange time period in which everything is uncertain, unsafe and insecure.
I witnessed the catastrophe of the ice storm in Greater Toronto Area. I had to stay two more days there due to flight cancellations because of the grounding of airplanes related to the cold weather. When we were on the board, we then had to spend another two hours procrastinating on the ground at the airport waiting for the cleaning of the ice off the runways and de-icing the airplane, until finally the flight could lift off. I was so glad to get out of that disaster area. At the same time I thought that it must be a humbling moment for humanity, especially the people who have the best equipments and technology in the most civilized place on the earth, yet they could not do much about the power of the nature. Truly it was my personal anecdotal experience of how great the power of the nature is!
Just a few minutes later, after less than ten minutes of flying, the bright sunshine came in through the window of the airplane. Above the sky there was a totally different world, nothing but the bright sunshine, the blue sky and the white clouds like the soft wool of sheep under the flight. These kinds of completely different worlds, one above and one below the sky made me ponder of the two kingdoms of Martin Luther (1483-1546), "the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of the world." In the place above the sky, it is always calm, peaceful, beautiful and bright with the sun, the moon and twinkling stars. But below the sky, where we are living now, there are always changing seasons, scorching heat, bone chilling cold, all sorts of storms and a variety of natural disasters.
UC Chimes does not romanticize the place of above the sky in the flight, or how good and beautiful it is! Rather it simply points out there are two different worlds. There are an unchanging world and a changing world. There are an everlasting and permanent place to live and a temporary one. And there are an ideal world, the paradise and a mundane one, the mortal world. That is a reason why and how we, human beings, hope and dream for building up this world to become a more peaceful, beautiful and harmonious place to live together with the whole people of the world like the kingdom of heaven. The Bile said, "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain" (Psalm 127:1). For knowing of the world above the sky, we can face with today's problems in hope, faith and love of God who watches over us.
