Nothing like a hurricane to throw a wrench in your plans…even a hurricane seemingly named after “nothing”: Nolo
As it turns out, Nolo sliced a day off our cruise around the islands of Hawaii. But that change, for us, mostly meant “more of the same.” We’re right back where we started our vacation, at a beautiful beach resort in Waikiki.
It’s been a relatively peaceful conclusion to the chaos of the previous 24 hours, when about 2,000 cruisers pretty much all found themselves on the same boat: needing to quickly figure something out for an unplanned arrival in Honolulu.
Do you try to book an earlier flight? Work on grabbing a hotel room? Plan to spend the night at the airport?
Eventually, we settled on Plan B: hotel room. Even so, there was sense of desperation in the air…every man for himself…with the cruise line essentially throwing the lot of us overboard once we hit the pier.
It worked out well in the end for my little pod of travelers. Still, I found my spirit a bit roiled by the whole scenario. I sensed that my “best self” had been driven into hiding by the many changes we were experiencing.
Only this morning did I recognize the spiritual defect at the heart of it all. Saint Paul, writing to the Philippians, puts it this way:
“Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but also for those of others.”
Pretty tough standard, I’m thinking. And maybe that’s the point. I like to think of myself as a good guy, a decent person. But when faced with uncertainty or unexpected challenges, my selfishness rises rather quickly to the fore.
Next time, perhaps I’ll do better. I’ll remember to “put on Christ.” I’ll be given the grace to think of others first.
And in the meantime, I hope I can count on God’s mercy … to keep me on track toward “entering the kingdom of God” along with all the other sinners around me.
Let us remember that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.
IHS
