I MISSED MY TRAIN AT MIDNIGHT

There is this little tale that I’m not proud of but which I would like to share anyway because it embodies the wisdom of what the Lord would like me to share with you. It is that in China, on one fateful day, my fiancé then, (now my husband) decided after one of his many “moot court rehearsals” (he was studying law) to visit me at all cost. Truth be told their rehearsal for the law school competition had taken so much of his time that we had not gotten the chance to see each other for a while so instead of insisting that he stayed in his school (which was some hours from my place by bus), I thought to myself he could be here and back in no time so there was no cause for worry.

Well, quite unfortunately, we went strolling through the food markets behind my school, discovered some places we had not seen before and ate some good food, forgetting how time was flying ahead of our plans. By the time we realized, it was about 10:30pm and the run to the station had ended in vain because by the time we got there, the train heading to Changping where my fiancé lived was gone. The sadder side of our dilemma was not the "NO train situation", but the fact that he did not take his passport. Without a passport no one could lodge in a hotel in China. A passport was needed as part of the procedure. So we went from trying to stop taxis and call taxis, to begging drivers who were not interested in going that far at that time of the night because it was a holiday and also because most of the taxis were already occupied.

To summarize our plight for that night, we ended up sleeping in a nearby park behind my hostel. Yes! In a park. I lived in a female hostel and the security persons were strict on allowing guys in the hostel after a certain hour. There was no one I knew who I could ask to lodge my fiancé for the night so the burden lay on my own shoulders. I remember in the end I felt there was no way I could leave him out there to sleep in the park alone, so I sat with him over there for hours, and in all we sat trying to console ourselves that it will soon be morning. We spoke, we brooded over our naivety and expressed our shock at how the night had suddenly turned in our disfavor and eventually as unbelievable as it sounds, we passed the night in between a bench and a large hard rock in the open garden and quite frankly, it was the longest night of my life! Not quite the camping you would want to have twice in a lifetime.

The good thing is, it reminded me of the blessing of having a roof over my head and the luxury of a bed. Beyond that, was also the lesson on the fact that we do pay for our naivety and lack of planning, and this one, my husband forever took with him from that experience. But again recently, I have received a revelation about that night in the garden that did not occur to me then. It is a revelation about the midnight we go through when we “miss the train"of life. The encouraging truth about that mishap is that the morning comes again, and another train heads off in the morning. 

The midnight hour of pain, uncertainty and difficulty that some of us may have gone through may be so grave and disheartening that we may not have thought about the fact that after a while, morning will come and with it can come a new train: a new opportunity, a new dawn, a new open door, and a new chance. All these are gliding close to you with each breaking day. So far as you do not make the park your dwelling place, so far as you do not settle in that sleeping place after the midnight, so far as you do not take it that you have missed your train for life, trust me the Lord will help you see another train going in the awaited destination soon. So I will just encourage you, do not make “I missed my train at midnight” your excuse for staying where you are. (because I jumped up and headed in search of the next available train at 5:30 in the morning, trust me). And so it is in life. The Lord wants me to tell you to rub the dust off your elbows and knees, and to get up from off the bench and go in search of the next train heading to your destination, because its already morning, and the dawn has come and with it stands a new train heading to that divine place. The park is not your home, the train will come again. Once upon a time I made a silly mistake and ended up sleeping in a park, and thought the night was cold and unbearably long, but the thought of the next morning's train, kept me warm at night.

From the lady on honeymoon with Jesus:

Don't despair!

You can survive your park experience by holding on to the hope of the next train coming.

Psalm 30:5 Says in the Word of God : Weeping may last through the night but joy comes with the morning. Receive Hope and joy in Jesus' name.

/alicedadzieblighton/ devotional blog/