{"id":292248,"date":"2011-03-25T09:57:58","date_gmt":"2011-03-25T08:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/a-brief-interlude\/"},"modified":"2024-05-13T20:42:03","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T18:42:03","slug":"a-brief-interlude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/a-brief-interlude\/","title":{"rendered":"A Brief Interlude"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong>\u201cAn hour\u2019s delay!\u201d my friend George exclaims. Unfortunately the message on the departure lounge\u2019s screen was clear. Statistics boast 97% on-time arrivals but on this occasion we were part of the other 3%! Luckily we had calculated plenty of time for reaching Manchester, our final destination.<\/p>\n

A queue of people start looking for seats. The children are the noisiest and tension starts to rise in the waiting area.<\/p>\n

To maximise my time I take out my laptop to sort my mail. From behind I hear a child cry\u2026 not so much cry but scream, breaking my concentration. Unfortunately I don\u2019t have ear plugs. How annoying! The wailing begins to get on my nerves.<\/p>\n

But then it occurs to me: could this be my chance to live the Word of Life and see the Will of God in every situation, event and person? I can try not to get annoyed, to be patient and to love.<\/p>\n

This thought gave me great peace and strangely enough the child\u2019s waling stopped bothering me.<\/p>\n

All of a sudden I see the whole scenario in a new way: my eyes are opened to people\u2019s concerns about how to get home, to the stress and tiredness that caused the child to cry in the first place. Maybe I can do something to help.<\/p>\n

I have an idea: I can turn off my laptop, take a pen and paper from my case and go over to the crying child.<\/p>\n

The little boy was all worked up in his father\u2019s arms.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan I draw you a picture?\u201d I say and the wailing stops suddenly. Two big dark eyes look at me in surprise.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, I\u2019ll draw you an animal. As soon as you guess what animal it is, tell me.\u201d<\/p>\n

My pen moves slowly across the paper.<\/p>\n

\u201cElephant!\u201d I hear a voice shout from behind. It\u2019s his four year-old sister. \u201cPhant\u201d echoes the little boy.<\/p>\n

\u201cExactly! Let\u2019s try the next one\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cA butterfly!\u201d; \u201cA train!\u201d<\/p>\n

Then all of a sudden the two of them run off to look out the window.<\/p>\n

I exchange a few words with the Moroccan father and return to my seat. \u201cMission accomplished\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou should have seen the faces on the people when you went over to the family,\u201d replies George, \u201cIt was as if they were asking themselves: what will happen next!\u201d<\/p>\n

D. R. (Denmark)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An experience from Denmark: What can happen in an airport departure lounge when you live the Gospel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focolare-worldwide-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}