Why are Trump and Putin meeting in Alaska?

Can you see Russia from Alaska? Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said she could and was mocked on Saturday Night Live for it. But she wasn’t wrong: Alaska and Russia are only 2.4 miles apart. As the New York Times notes, this is perhaps why US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin chose the state for their meeting on Friday.

This is not the first time Alaska has been instrumental in US–Russia relations. In 1867, the US bought the land from Russia for the equivalent of $160 million in today’s dollars. After World War II, America made Alaska a state, constructed military bases there, and used it to monitor its Cold War rival. Even today, many people in Alaska have Russian surnames.

Now, as the Times notes, “Alaska may help write the next chapter in Russian–American affairs.” But whatever comes of the presidents’ meeting, there’s an aspect of Alaska I find relevant to each of our souls, whatever “state” we find ourselves today.

Far from America while still in America

My wife and I have been privileged to travel to Alaska twice over the years. Each time, we were stunned by its magnificent, awe-inspiring beauty. I have experienced there, as nowhere else, the paradoxical sense of human isolation and divine presence.

Alaska is the largest state in America by land mass. If you placed it atop the continental US, it would stretch from one coast to the other. However, it has one of our smallest populations, ranking only above Vermont and Wyoming. As a result, the state has the lowest population density in America, with only about 1.3 people per square mile. 

And it is geographically isolated from the rest of America, separated from the contiguous US by approximately five hundred miles of Canadian territory. As a result, an American can feel very far from America and other Americans while being in America.

This is both a physical reality and a spiritual parable.

The problem of “purpose anxiety”

“Purpose anxiety” can be described as the gnawing sense that one’s life should have an overarching purpose that is difficult to discover. According to psychotherapist Jody Day, “Part of what it is to have a human consciousness is to think about our place in the universe. But a lot of the places that we’ve naturally found meaning in our culture in, say, the last hundred years are falling away.”

As Americans have become less religious, this primary path to purpose has become less traveled. Many also traditionally found purpose in ensuring that their children had a better life than they did, but Day notes that many don’t have confidence that this will be the case anymore.

According to Michael Steger, a professor at Colorado State University and director of its Center for Meaning and Purpose, “Now we’re stuck trying to do the harder thing, which is, one by one, figure out everything in the universe and how we fit.”

No wonder so many Americans are struggling with anxiety, loneliness, and depression. No wonder substance abuse and deaths by suicide are escalating.

This is because we are looking around when we should be looking up.

A tool for a different garage

In my Alaska experiences, I found even the indescribable beauty and magnificence of its landscape to be inadequate for my soul’s hunger.

Perhaps you have known the feeling—you gazed at a glorious sunrise or sunset, stood beside a shimmering lake, or atop an expansive mountain peak, but somehow, in the depths of your being, you sensed that there is still something “more.” There’s an intuitive, indescribable feeling that this is not all there is, that there is a perfection that lies beyond even this beauty.

It’s as though I found a tool in my garage that had no application I could discern. It was clearly engineered for a purpose, but it would not fix or work with anything else in the garage. In this case, I can know that it was intended to work with something found somewhere else.

CS Lewis famously observed, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

The good news is that we can experience that other “world” in the midst of this world.

“Seven times a day I praise you”

In Psalm 55, David devoted himself to praying to God “evening and morning and at noon” (v. 17). This reflects a typical pattern in Judaism across history. For example, we read in Daniel 6 that Daniel “got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously” (v. 10).

In Acts 3, we find the apostles “going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour” (v. 1). This was the third time for prayer and sacrifice at the temple that day. In Acts 10, we find Peter praying at noon, the second hour of prayer (v. 9).

Many observant Jews from then to now will stop three times each day, face toward Jerusalem, and pray. This is a pattern that has been emulated in many monastic communities and spirituality strategies over the centuries as well. Some even follow the pattern of Psalm 119:164, “Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous rules,” developing “canonical hours” for prayer that they call by their Latin names:

• Matins (nighttime) and Lauds (early morning)
• Prime (first hour of daylight)
• Terce (third hour)
• Sext (noon)
• None (ninth hour)
• Vespers (sunset evening)
• Compline (end of day)

What are less-liturgical Christians to make of all this?

Closer than the breath in our lungs

There is no command in Scripture that we must pray at such set times. David’s statement is descriptive rather than prescriptive, as are Psalm 119:164 and the other examples we have discussed. The New Testament teaches us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) and to be “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication” (Ephesians 6:18).

And yet, I have found that set times of prayer have been very helpful for me in focusing myself on God. I set aside a concerted time each morning with him in prayer, Bible study, and personal worship. Then, following Psalm 55:17, I strive to stop again at noon and in the evening to spend time intentionally in his presence.

However, none of this earns our Father’s favor. Prayer and other spiritual disciplines do not merit God’s grace (which is a contradiction in terms)—they position us to experience what his grace chooses to give.

And make no mistake, experiencing God’s presence is a gift of such grace. First15, our ministry’s devotional resource, asks today:

What would it be like to live your life entirely in the presence of God? What would change if you were to experience his goodness with every moment, waking or sleeping? How would the reality of his presence change the way you live your life for the better?

The remarkable thing is that we have no reason to live our lives apart from God. When Jesus died, God tore the veil from top to bottom that separated us from him. His tearing of the veil symbolizes the entire reason for the death of Jesus: that God can once again dwell among his people. And furthermore, when you became a Christian you were filled with God himself. He’s closer to you than the very breath that fills your lungs.

We obviously don’t have to go to Alaska or anyplace else to experience a God who is this close to us. The Creator of our magnificent universe loves each of us as if there were only one of us. As a result, he makes himself as available to us as our next prayer.

When will you next experience his transforming presence?

Why not now?