Travelling to Australia is always an adventure, especially when the adventure begins before you even reach the airport.
It started with a throbbing toe. The one that decides to declare independence the morning before your flight. An ingrown toenail: nature’s way of reminding you that even the smallest part of your body can stage a full-scale rebellion. I could almost hear it pulsing to my heartbeat: ‘You’re going to Australia and I’m coming too.’
Then came the plane. You know the kind, every passenger coughing, sneezing and sniffling in surround sound. Somewhere over the Indian Ocean, I realised I’d become the proud recipient of a complimentary in-flight cold. The air-conditioning was set to Arctic and I just couldn’t get warm.
And, of course, there’s jet lag. Ten hours of it. That curious condition where your body insists it’s breakfast time while the clock insists it’s midnight. You find yourself standing in the kitchen at 1am, wondering whether to pray, read the Bible or make toast.
Then my tooth joined the party. The crown of a molar snapped clean off, leaving me with a hole large enough to store loose change. Within days I was reclining in a dentist’s chair having a temporary filling fitted.
At this point I was feeling rather heroic for simply surviving. My toe, my head, my sleep, and then my mouth was under construction.
Then my mind wandered to the apostle Paul. Now there was a traveller. Shipwrecked three times, flogged five times, beaten with rods, imprisoned, bitten by a snake and he still found time to write half the New Testament. He endured what most of us couldn’t survive for an afternoon and called it ‘light and momentary troubles’ (2 Corinthians 4:17 NIV).
Suddenly, my toe, head and dental drama didn’t seem quite so catastrophic. It’s amazing how a change in perspective changes everything. There’s a saying worth remembering:
‘If we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.’
Perspective doesn’t deny reality, it redefines it. It shifts our focus from what’s wrong to what God can make right.
When we look through the lens of faith, an inconvenience becomes an invitation. A delay becomes a lesson in dependence. Even a throbbing toe or a broken tooth can become a teacher.
Paul’s perspective was rooted not in comfort but in calling. He could say, ‘We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair’ (2 Corinthians 4:8 NIV).
In other words: life may bruise you, but it doesn’t have to break you. It’s not what happens to us that defines us, but what happens in us as a result.
When I stop viewing my irritations as catastrophes and start seeing them as character-building, they lose their sting. Gratitude and grumbling can’t share the same seat; one of them always has to get off the plane.
So now, whenever I’m tempted to complain about travel, tiredness or teeth, I remember Paul and thank God that I’m flying, not floating on a plank; coughing, not being flogged; and slightly inconvenienced, not snake-bitten.
Perspective turns pressure into praise, problems into possibilities, and pain into purpose.
Sometimes the only difference between misery and ministry is the way you look at it.
Oh, I nearly forgot to say, the two pastors’ conferences were amazing! What a privilege to teach over a thousand pastors how to preach and how to evangelise. And I had the joy of preaching the gospel at three churches, where many received Christ. At one service, an elderly gentleman came forward to receive Jesus, his wife had prayed for his conversion for fifty years! I wept when I was told this. And that, right there, is why Killy and I do what we do.
And now for the journey home!
Prayer
Lord, thank you for the gift of perspective. When I’m tempted to grumble, teach me to be grateful. When I focus on the problem, remind me of your presence. Help me to see every irritation as an invitation to trust you more deeply. And may my attitude always travel first class, even when my circumstances don’t. Amen.
J.John
