We'll call him Jonah

Last week I left us on holidays in New Zealand. This week we take a detour into my future, years later when I lived in Nambour, a delightful country town just north of Brisbane.

Something felt different about that day. I hurried onto the Nambour railway platform, wondering what was important about this particular journey to Brisbane.

I travelled down regularly to visit my mother with Alzheimer’s disease but this day I’d felt a clear whisper from God to pray for my train trip.

There were quite a few people waiting on the platform but there was space at the end of a seat with a youngish man seated at the other end, so I sat there.

“Do you have a pen I can borrow?” the man asked.

Do I ever go anywhere without a pen?

I handed him my biro and he proceeded to write some notes.

A whirring whine announced the arrival of the train. The man, who introduced himself – we’ll call him Joe, as I tend to think of him as Jonah – said, “Oh, I’m not finished with your pen. Can I give it back to you on the train?”

“Sure.”

So Joe and I sat opposite each other for the one hour and fifty minutes journey to Brisbane. He seemed to want to talk as he returned my biro, so I put my book in my bag and tried a harmless, “Do you live in Nambour?”

He suppressed a shudder. “No. I came from . . .” and he named a town just outside Brisbane.

“Actually,” he paused, “I was trying to get away.”

“From what?”

He sighed. “Everything. My job, my wife (she’s a Christian and I’m supposed to be one too). And I’m in a band and my nerves are shot from the noise.”

I gave a sympathetic murmur, while my mind whirled with  Do I tell him or leave him in peace? At last I felt obliged to add, “Um, actually I’m a Christian too.”

Seeming unfazed, he continued, “I got on a bus near home. I bought a ticket to Townsville. But I couldn’t handle sitting still in a small space. My nerves were killing me! So I got off the bus here in Nambour.”

Joe must have been in a bad way! The bus trip to Townsville would have taken about twenty-five hours. He abandoned it after two or three hours. Here, of all places. Trying to get away from a Christian family, he had me as a travel companion.

We glanced out the window as the train wound its way near the magnificent Glasshouse Mountains and through tracts of part-cleared rain forest.

Photo by Pixabay

“So where are you going now?” I asked.

He sighed. “I suppose I’ll have to go home. I just can’t handle sitting still for long enough to travel far.”

For the rest of the journey we discussed his predicament and I encouraged him to try to get on with being a Christian and a husband. We discussed some of his struggles. He seemed much happier by the time the train sighed into Roma Street station and I gathered my overnight bags and waved him goodbye.

I had to see the funny side.

And the ‘God side’.

I hope it all worked out for him.

Would you have told him you were a Christian or left him in peace?