Greek Tragedy
After my senior year of high school my mama and I went to Greece. Along with us came my mom’s good friend Shelley, her son AJ, and our mutual friend Katie. The trip was filled with five totally different personality types bundling into close quarters, adjusting to time changes, and trying to navigate in a foreign language. There was some tension, a good handful of awkwardness, and a lot of laughter.
We spent our first two nights of the trip in Athens before we planned to take a ferry over to the island of Santorini. The night before we left, all of us sat down and talked through the next morning: how early we needed to leave to catch the train, how long the train would take to get to the harbor, when our ferry would leave, etc. We figured out a tentative plan and tried to get some sleep.
The next morning we were running just a tad behind schedule (I know, shocker). However, as we hopped onto our train we figured we would still be at the harbor with time to spare. When we arrived at the harbor though, we began to frantically look around.
In case y’all didn’t know, Greece is a maritime nation, aka a nation with a lot of boats, aka their harbors are big and stretch miles long.
There were hundreds of people swarming all around us as we got off the train: bustling passengers with suitcases, staff directing people, food vendors shouting, crewmen running back and forth. To the left of us there was also a long, seemingly unending line of people in front of a large booth that said “Tickets and Information.”
Shelley—the planner of the group—instantly started growing anxious and making plans, realizing we were likely much shorter on time than we had anticipated. “Okay, it’s fine we already have our tickets so luckily we don’t need to wait in that line. We just need to figure out what dock our ferry leaves from,” she said, trying to sound confident.
AJ though had beaten her to it and was rushing back, his eyes wide as he explained to us all how far away our dock was… nearly a mile. We had less than 15 minutes to get to our boat. In our sandals, we began to hurry towards our ship with three weeks of suitcases and duffel bags in tow, dodging other passengers and crew. As time shaved away, AJ dumped his bag off with us and sprinted ahead, trying to catch the crew before the boat untied to let them know we were coming.
Minutes before our ferry was supposed to leave we could make out AJ in the distance, frantically waving his arms back and forth above his head and motioning for us to hurry up. The crew had already untied one of the ropes holding the boat to the dock and was yelling back and forth at each other in Greek as we arrived covered in sweat. We tried to apologize profusely as we threw our bags to the crew on board and hopped on to the back of the ship as the last crewman pushed the boat off the dock and we lurched away from land. With a thick Greek accent, the man who had helped us scramble on board asked for our tickets.
“Oh yes, of course! Thank God we got these ahead of time huh?” said Shelley as she pulled out papers she had printed for the ferry from a zippered pocket and handed them to the man.
“Mmm, no... where are tickets?” asked the man, and we all looked at each other with anxiety.
“Oh, I printed them at home,” said Shelley, “I hope that’s okay.”
“No, these just placeholders. You must pick up ticket from ticket booth,” said the man before he began yelling toward the other crewman.
We did our best to apologize again. The guy shooed us toward passenger seating with the back of his hand and we sulked away.
As it turns out, the “tickets and information” line we had seen earlier was so long because everyone, whether they had purchased their tickets ahead of time or not, still had to pick up proper tickets. We understood that our lack of knowledge and our being so late had angered nearly an entire crew of Greek men and likely a good handful of the passengers on board. I played and replayed the images of us running through the harbor like stupid Americans. I felt foolish and dumb and angry for not being more proactive during the morning, for not being on time like we had planned, or not doing more research.
However, while replaying the scenario in my mind, I began to realize that our being so late actually saved us from our lack of knowledge. If we had arrived to the harbor at the time we had discussed the night before, we likely wouldn’t have been allowed to board our ferry. If we had been there an hour earlier we would’ve been told to go get proper tickets but wouldn’t have had the time to stand in the line that looked well over an hour long. If we had arrived even just five minutes earlier, the ship would’ve still been docked, and the crew would’ve simply turned us away for not having real tickets before they untied and headed for Santorini. In any other scenario, we likely wouldn’t have made it onto that ferry. It was our untimely arrival that made for a perfectly timely departure.
So often this happens to me… it’s just not usually with travel. I find myself in situations where everything seems to have gone completely wrong and yet later on—sometimes years later—I find everything that was seemingly wrong was orchestrated uniquely and perfectly for my life. I find that frustrating or frightening health concerns created empathy I would’ve never had. I find that broken hearts brought revelation that would’ve never been unlocked.
Again and again in the Bible there are examples of God’s people who grow frustrated with His timing, people who begin to question and doubt things the Lord has promised. One of these people is Sarah, Abraham’s wife. She wants to hop to the next season, to what she feels should be, hopes can be, or sees will be. She gets excited about a promise and wants to make it happen and make it happen now. The issue with this is that God knows what He is doing in Sarah’s life even when she can’t see it. Genesis 16 opens with Sarah blaming God for her lack of children and asking her husband to instead conceive with Hagar, her servant. Sarah, filled with too much impatience and doubt to believe for the real promise, asks for the artificial version of it.
So easily could I swap Sarah’s name for mine. I have painstakingly looked back at seasons because I never really lived them; I was chasing after the next season so desperately that I missed out on the one I was in. I tried to force myself into what was coming next and ended up settling for short of fullness. I would find myself in shallow relationships or unhealthy jobs because I would get too anxious that nothing else would come.
Later on, in Genesis 18, Sarah is promised again a child of her own and she laughs. Sarah is in disbelief of the goodness of God. In her 90s, she can’t imagine that He could somehow make it work for her to conceive that late in her life. And yet… she does. Because even when we mess up in big ways, God rewrites stories and scripts with grace and redemption.
I think that’s one of the most difficult things about a relationship with an Alpha and Omega God—the fact that I don’t get to be the planner. I have to just show up to what He has for me and lean into the promise that the best is yet to come. I have to know that sometimes a season that seems like it is coming too late actually saves me from my earlier myself. I have to understand that, unsurprisingly, He is better at His job than I am.
Friends, our God fused together groups of broken people over thousands of years just to create a lineage bearing His son. He revealed himself in different ways to fishermen and Pharisees, foes and friends, virgins and prostitutes. He could have saved us from sin in a second and instead he orchestrated the betrayal, death, and resurrection of His son, weaving together lives and triumphs and miracles. He is a perfect planner. He is THE perfect planner, and even though sometimes it may feel like we are about to miss the boat, He always has the details orchestrated.
“The Lord directs the steps of the Godly. He delights in every detail of their lives.” Psalm 37:23 (NLT)
Please note: I promise I am a better travel partner than it seems.
