Airport
“For all the complaints about the aches of air travel, it’s pretty marvelous if you think about it.”
An airport is a sacred place. Airports serve as the crossroads of the modern era, moving people across the country and around the world. Serving more than points of departure and arrival, they are engines of economic development. The infrastructure of a large airport can be as expansive as a small city. An airport is an enormously complex intersection of travel, technology, and trades. In 2025, Denver International Airport (DEN) will celebrate 30 years. Arguably, it is responsible for forming Denver more than any other 30-year-old entity in the city.
Denver International Airport (DEN) was the 3rd busiest airport in the US and 6th busiest in the world in 2023 welcoming 77.8 million passengers with flights to over 200 destinations. DEN has over 40,000 employees, making it the largest employer in the state. It is the largest airport site in North America and the second-largest in the world, operating on 53 square miles of land, which is twice the size of Manhattan. The airports of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, Chicago O’Hare, Los Angeles International, and Dallas Fort Worth could all fit collectively on DEN’s expansive property. The airport terminal at DEN has become internationally recognized for its’ peaked roof, designed to be reflective of snow-covered mountains and evoke the indigenous history of Native American teepees. A uniquely wing shaped hotel was built in 2015, and in 2016 the completion of the A-Line commuter rail train connected DEN to downtown Denver’s Union Station.
With all the ingenuity and complexity of an airport, what can be overlooked are the multitudes of people who move through them. In his book The Life We’re Looking For, author Andy Crouch shares a practice that emerged while stuck in Chicago’s O’Hare airport. He needed to move his body, so he began the following prayer walk experiment: “As I walked, I decided, I would try to take note of each person I passed. I would pay as much attention to each of them as I could… and say to myself as I saw each one, image bearer… By the time I reached the corridor where Terminal 1 connects to Terminal 2, I had passed perhaps 200 people, glancing at their faces just long enough to say to myself, image bearer. I had six more concourses to go… By the end of the walk… I had passed people in every stage of life and health, many national and ethnic backgrounds, some traveling together, most seemingly alone. The stories I would never learn behind each of those faces… carried an emotional and spiritual weight that I can still feel, years later. From time to time, I repeat this exercise... Image bearer, image bearer, image bearer. It never fails to move me.”
Airports are pivotal places of arrival and departure. It is where people leave for business trips and return from family travel. It is the site of new beginnings and final farewells. Every day individuals walk through airports to board planes to see people they love for the first time or the last time. It serves as a threshold every hour for countless human stories. It is a place, if we have eyes to see, overflowing with the beauty of people made in the image of God. An airport is a sacred place.
