Las Vegas

I was in Las Vegas yesterday. I landed after a brief flight on Sunday night. I don't like Las Vegas. To me, it is a loud, brash city that sees any sort of suggestion of restraint as the equivalent of the complete revocation of all human rights and freedoms.

As I was departing the airport with many other people, I overheard two Las Vegas natives commenting to each other about some exuberant passengers nearby. One man said to another "It's interesting that everyone comes to Vegas laughing, but no one leaves laughing." That comment really struck me as quite insightful.

After a productive meeting, I was back in the airport, waiting for my plane to take a short flight back home. I could feel my spirit losing ground to the oppression around me. The feeling had been growing all day, but now that I was "alone with myself", I was suddenly aware of the feeling and what it actually was.

I began to pray, asking God for insight into the people around me. Looking around, I saw so many people in pain; and my inner pain also continue to grow. The pinnacle was when I saw a couple get off of the plane I was about to board. They were matter of fact, the husband walking a step of two ahead of the wife. The wife was holding the hand of their daughter. Their daughter was why I had even noticed the couple in the first place. She was about ten years old, wearing a blue cotton dress with brown hair and a moderate case of Down's Syndrome. I was amazed and impressed by the couple that they had actually allowed their child to live. I continued watching this small family as they walked away, down the terminal when I realized that they had another child, a son about 18-months old, who didn't have Down's. I was even more impressed, as most people stop having children after they receive a child with a handicap.

As I watched this family, my heart began to weep. I was overcome with emotions that I still can't identify. The pain of all of the people around me, the heroic parents who had defied culture, stood their ground and were raising a child who, in all likelihood, would always remain a child, living with them, the oppression of the city that I had been experiencing for the last 24 hours. All of these things welled up inside my heart and it began to weep. I was simultaneously thanking and praising Him for the life of this child who had been spared and crying for those who felt so alone.

Later, on the airplane, just as it began to accelerate for take-off, I thought to myself. "I'm glad to be leaving. I hate this city." The Holy Spirit instantly replied, "I don't hate this city. I love this city. She is to me a daughter. And just as a good father cries for a wayward daughter, so do I weep for Las Vegas." It brought to mind when Jesus wept over Jerusalem and I quoted the verse to myself, but different. "O Las Vegas, Las Vegas, how I long to gather you to me..."

As the plane ascended into the air bringing me home, I was, for the first time, struck by the beauty of the city. Actually, for the first time of any city, I saw, why people can describe a city as beautiful. I can't explain it, but I saw it. The landscape, yes, even in the desert with the glittering, sparkling city, rising like an oasis out of the desert floor, was to me beautiful.

I began to ponder why the city refused (so far) to turn from its ways. I saw it as a beloved daughter of God, run away from home, like the Prodigal Son, living out in the desert, so worn out and depressed from chasing other things. But instead of returning home like the Prodigal, she decides that it would be better for her to die "free", rather than return home to have to live with her Fathers "restrictions".

I turned on my iPod, turning to the next podcast on the list. It just happened to be "The Beauty of Holiness." The speaker said something at the beginning that struck me, that holiness is beautiful. Having just had my eyes opened to the beauty of Las Vegas, I reflected on that thought for a moment. That Las Vegas is called to be a holy city. A city set apart from the world as a city that can and does reflect the beauty of the holiness of God.

It is clearly not walking in that calling yet, but one day it will. Today, it sits atop the the cities of the United States as the epitome of the "Longing for Beauty" and the inhabitants and the visitors exist as a constant reminder that everything the world has to offer is empty compared to the riches and beauty available to everyone who desires after eternal things.