On The 6:28

The turning back of the clocks has meant that the stern faced, silent crowd that board the 6.28 train from Andover to London are surrounded by darkness during the long minutes that tick by before the train arrives and many of the crowd can return to sleep when they commandeer a seat.

I've taken to grabbing the seat outside the main carriage, you know, the one that pulls down like a cinema chair but only gives you a view of the grey walls of the train, or even worse, is outside the toilet. As the train pulls away, I look out of the window and see the same darkness for the entire twenty minutes that I am on board before my stop arrives.

But there was something different about a recent journey.

The carriages were all changed around, causing chaos to the 6.29 faithful who have gotten used to knowing exactly which concrete slabs to stand on so that they can get through the doors first. When I managed to grab the cinema seat, I realised that something else was different. I was facing the other way, the direction that the train was headed for.

And rather than staring into the pitch darkness of a cold, miserable November morning, there was something else for my eyes to focus on; the splintering of the darkness and the emerging sun rapidly raising the curtain on a brand new day.

Sure, there was darkness behind me. But in front of me was something altogether more exciting.

The Whistler

I sat in a park eating my lunch this week.

There was a man in the middle of the field, whistling.

Fifteen minutes of whistling.

Just whistling.

Rooted to the same spot.

After fifteen minutes, by which time I had confirmed that I should classify this gentleman as absolutely loopy, a dog burst through from some nearby bushes and hurtled at great speed towards the whistling man.

Then the man and the dog walked on together.

I don't like drawing spiritual parallels with regards to dogs, but I wonder how often, like that dog, I am ignoring God's calls to me to go where He is.

I like to think that recently I've been on a burst of increased fervour with regards to my relationship with God.

But maybe He's been asking me to be there with Him for ages, and my recent progress is actually the equivilent of that dog suddenly realising that the whistle was aimed at him and that he needed to move fast. That what is progress for me is just getting to where I was supposed to be all along, if I had been listening to the call.

The Mini Bus Of Despair

I tried to block out the noise, but without success.

They were all around me in the mini bus.

Teenagers.

They were being rude, deliberately offensive and consistently unresponsive to my requests for some more reasonable behaviour towards each other.

And we were still over half an hour away from home.

As I descended deeper in silent depths of discouragement and despair, I was reminded of a challenging mission I set myself recently. That whenever I have somebody before me in need, to ask myself who else is going to help this person, and who is else there praying for this person.

I realised that this Wednesday evening trip to Laserquest was the practical side of things, and that as we were now on the way home, the most significant and revolutionary thing I could do was pray quietly for everyone on the bus and the various situations they faced on a daily basis.

So I prayed.

Time passed.

No change to the noise level and crude conversation topics.

We arrived back into Andover.

I felt different.

The noise, bad language and bad behaviour hadn't changed as a result of my prayers. But I had changed.

My prayers actually had done me more good on this occasion, reminding me of the need to forget myself and why it is that I use hours of my free time on a weekly basis to work with young people.

I realised it's a privilege to work with the young people I see each week, no matter what bad press gets given to teenagers in the press.

I understood how prayer can actually tune me out of my selfish frequency, and get me onto God's wavelength, enabling me to see the issues before me from His perspective rather than my own.

And who knows what longer term impacts my prayers might have on the lives of those young people. Certainly not me.

But God does.