Cairo, Egypt, on the ground, is a rollicking, noisy, smelly, living city. Cars roar and honk their horns incessantly. The Muslim call to prayer sounds out from hundreds of minarets and the incense of prayer rises up in hundreds of churches. Streets are lined with people, shops, wares for sales, garbage, cats and dogs, all in a dance which seems anything but harmonious but never-the-less keeps going on, seemingly twenty-four-seven. Life is hard-edged and hardworking.
Beneath the searing Middle Eastern sun, this city, in this country, has lived on for centuries upon centuries, adding up into millennia now. Here, the sweep of history is not known by looking things up in a book or on Google, but simply by looking up. The pyramids, the temples, the blowing Sahara sand that swallows them, puts one’s little life in a different frame of reference. This land runs deep and long, our lives run shallow and short by comparison. In fact, comparisons of biblical proportions pop into one’s head, especially since the Red Sea, Mount Sinai and the River of Egypt are right here, where one seems to live in the books of Genesis and Exodus. A dramatic example of this is seen in two pictures. The Christ from whom we have set our calendars, in the two thousand and eleven years since his birth, is pictured here as a small child in the company of his parents, Mary and Joseph, the same pyramids in the background as appear behind us. The holy family had come to Egypt in search of safety from the violent Herod.
“…An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, ‘Arise, take the young Child and His mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I bring you word; for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him.’ When he arose, he took the young Child and His mother by night and departed for Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, ‘Out of Egypt I called My Son.’”
-St. Matthew 2:13-15
So, we stand and live here, where they walked and lived so long ago, when the pyramids were already old. Perspective is different, standing here.
