I am stealing a few minutes at Hong Kong International Airport to write as I stop over on the way to Japan, a land suddenly wracked by twin disasters, an earthquake and an airport runway crash with a miracle escape from fire for the passengers on a JAL Airbus 350, but only one survivor from a smaller Dash 8.
Until New Year, Japan seemed a peaceful, safe place to go. I am accompanying my wife, Bronwen, as she teaches attachment theory, which is her specialty. (Please don’t ask me to explain what I don’t understand.)
You might have said the same about the Middle East until October 7.
World events, natural and human-made, are throwing a message of contingency at us. Everything is contingent – we are not human islands; even my cosseted Sydney lifestyle is cosseted no more, especially as I fly away from it.
“Events, dear boy” is what UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan answered when a journo asked what the greatest challenge for political leaders was. Some surprise was always lurking. Leadership was contingent.
It was for him. he was felled by the Profumo scandal – a junior minister was not careful who he slept with.
So I sit in a darkened airport, waiting for the dawn and a flight to Sapporo. Fully aware that life is contingent.
Flight brings Psalm 91 to mind. “He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
You will not fear the terror of night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,
nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
nor the plague that destroys at midday.“
Even as a Christian, sheltering under God’s feathers (and Jesus says someting similar about sheltering the children of Jerusalem as a mother hen in Luke 13), I spend far too much time knowing but ignoring life is contingent. He is the Lord of “events dear boy”, after all.