We landed for vacation at Laguardia Airport (LGA) near New York City. We were meeting our son Logan at the airport as we were flying in from Charleston and he was flying in from DFW. We got our bags and texted hi our plan. He was about to board the plane from Dallas. We would go get the rental car and then find a way to waste time until we needed to come back to get him. His plane took off. We headed to the rental car shuttle bus.
The map said it was 1.5 miles to the rental car place. We stepped out onto the curb and saw a mass of frozen steel. No cars were moving. Horns were blaring. People were standing six deep. We pushed through the crowd to get to the middle island to stand where the shuttle picked up. Then we waited. We consulted our phones. We talked to our neighbors. The cars did not move. For 45 minutes not a single car moved an inch. It was like an episode of the twilight zone. Tempers were rising, urgency began to creep into my extremities.
I furiously searched for a way to walk to the Avis center, but was assured over and over again, that it could not be done. Since the new travel restrictions the airport is surrounded by fences and highways in such a way that it is nearly impossible to walk from where I was to where I wanted to go. It was no use to call a taxi or an Uber. Nothing was moving.
Then a tiny trickle of movement began. Another hour passed and no shuttles had arrived. Eventually, one came. We got on, or in or inbetween. We were pushed in so tightly as people scrambled for a space on the bus. It was hot. It was excruciating. Cindy and I were separated by a dozen people. We could not move. The bus began to creep. It took three hours to get from the curb to the Avis counter. We were exhausted. Logan had arrived at the terminal before we got the rental car.
I had cound a blog that described a nearly secret path that the works use to get to the airport. I told Logan were to wait and then we drove to a nearby neighborhood and I jumped out of the car. I wove my way across a bridge, through a walkway, near a parking garage and into the terminal. I found Logan and then we repeated the process to get back to Cindy who was driving the getaway car. We drove to Albany to spend the night quicker that we had gotten our car.
Sometimes the last part of the journey is the furthest. Sometimes the closer we come to that which we want, the resistance increases. As we journey this fall into becoming a House of Prayer for all Nations, don’t be surprised if we move slower, if it gets harder, but let us push through and find a way for our prayer lives to become deeper and richer and more meaningful.