I was sitting waiting for my flight at the Taoyuan Airport outside of Taipei and it is a gorgeous airport. There are many things to see and do and it is a pretty large airport. I was watching two young ladies who were so wrapped up in their cell phones taking selfies that I wondered if they would make their flight. Anyway a lady came up to where I sat pushing her husband in a wheel chair, and I stood up to give her room thinking she might be crowded but she told me it was fine in pretty good English. She started talking and said that she was going to South Carolina where her husband had managed a plastic manufacturing plant and while they were living and working there he had a stroke and lost the use of his left side. Rehabilitation wasn’t working and they came back to Taiwan to settle some business and to settle their minds and were now going back to see what the future held for them. It was a sobering conversation and I could not help but notice the dedication she had for him and the constant solicitude that she showed compared to the self absorption of the two young women near us. She pushed him faithfully around that huge airport and didn’t relinquish him until it was time to board when an airline employee took over. She told me that he could not talk anymore but they had figured out a language that was working. They had been together for almost 40 years.
The day before at this same airport a man picked up his wife and threw over the railing of a stairway. She fell 40 feet hiting various objects on the way down. He jumped over the railing on top of her and she was badly injured. He was arrested and asked Donald Trump to save him as they led him away. People who were witnesses said they had been engaged in a fierce fight for several minutes before the stair toss.
So the difference is stark. One couple so thoroughly dedicated to one another they are a model of the marriage vow that says “in sickness and health, in weal and in woe” and the other couple so filled with anger and vituperation that they were willing to kill. Family feuds are nothing new of course and I imagine there was yelling going just outside the Garden of Eden when the angel starting barring the way in, but things go out of hand when Cain killed Abel.
Fits of rage abound in the Bible. The crowds on the day of the crucifixion and mob that stoned Stephen are examples. The word for rage in the Bible refers to wild things, wild country, living with beasts and wild animals. Fits of love show up in the Bible too. The great example is of course Jesus and love for the world that caused Him to go to the cross. He has a kind of fit when He weeps over Jerusalem out of love.
My last glimpse of the man was his wife leading him to the plane as an attendant pushed him in the chair. I think of them a lot and pray they are doing well. The couple that went over the stair well I don’t think of too much – too depressing.
