"A story is told of a young student who desperately wanted to meet Elijah. The boy's father assured him that if he would stay up all night and study with his whole heart, Elijah would come to greet him. The student did as his father instructed, yet nothing happened. Then one night while he was studying, there was a knock at the door. When he opened it, there was no one there but an old man who wanted something to eat. The student was too busy for such a distraction from his holy tasks, so he sent the man away.
"When the boy told his father about the intrusion of the late-night visitor, the father sighed. 'That intrusion,' said the father, 'was Elijah, and you have missed the opportunity of speaking with him. Now it is too late.' From that day on, the boy always warmly greeted everyone he met, no matter how busy he was. He later became a rabbi."
"I wasn't thinking at all about God during my airport delay. I was thinking about my missed appointments and assignments and all those intrusions that were keeping me from them. I was thinking about being somewhere other than where I was. But God was in the place I thought I wasn't supposed to be, and I did not know it.
"The Jewish mystical tradition teaches that in everything there is a Divine spark, and we are in the places we find ourselves not by accident but to redeem the holy sparks present there. Everything calls to us — 'Here I am' — but we aren't listening. Every situation wants to change us, but we are more focused on changing the situation. We hurry life along to get to 'the point.'
"But the point isn't the beginning and the end, our place of origin or our destination. The journey is the point: the opportunity to hear the call and to respond to the other. I learned that lesson on a flight from Philadelphia to Indianapolis. In responding to the man on the plane and to his questions about religion, I learned that you never know where, when, or through whom revelation may come."
