Nairobi International Airport
Every answer to prayer is a testimony worth sharing, right? Well, this one may give you a laugh at my expense! But beware… it’s not for weak stomachs!
WARNING:
The following story contains content that may
be offensive (or hilarious) to some readers.
As anyone who travels regularly in the developing world will understand, sickness is a very real possibility. Not only are our pampered western stomachs not accustomed to much of the common bacteria found within the food and water supplies of developing countries, but there is also a much greater likelihood of encountering and contracting exotic illnesses, such as typhoid, cholera and yellow fever.
Most experienced travellers will take sensible precautions, such as obtaining the relevant immunisations, packing a good medical kit, and going prepared with mosquito nets, insect repellent and sensible clothes to prevent against the mosquito-born parasites that spread potentially deadly malaria. But at the end of the day, when all precautions have been taken, travel to these places is still a calculated risk. And when you choose to go to places where hospitals are not well equipped and staff not professionally trained, it really is an exercise in entrusting yourself to God’s power to care and protect.
As a seasoned traveller, I make a habit of taking all of the responsible precautions. But after my first two trips I soon realised that my anti-malaria tablets were actually making me sick, so I made the conscious and deliberate decision to dispense with those, concentrating instead on avoiding getting bitten by mosquitoes in the first place. I don’t recommend that for everyone, but it’s a strategy that has certainly worked well for me so far — I’ve been to Africa 15 times and haven’t had malaria yet. By contrast I have known fellow travellers who have done all the right things, by the book, only to end up in hospital with typhoid and malaria together. I can only put my experience down to the grace of God and thank him that I have not been afflicted.
But apparently no traveller is immune to food poisoning. In my case it did not come in a remote village while eating boiled goat or cow intestines. Instead, it came at Nairobi International Airport after eating an apricot danish pastry and a chocolate-coated ice-cream — which, by the way, I enjoyed thoroughly.
Maybe it was because I had just come from two weeks in the bush, eating nothing but freshly cooked vegetables and drinking pure rainwater. Maybe my body had become detoxified to such an extent that the butter and dairy produce in what I was eating was too much of a shock to my system. Or maybe there was something contaminated in what I ate. But whatever the case, my stomach started to complain and it wasn’t long before I realised that I needed to find a toilet, and fast. Nothing could have prepared me for the severity of what I was about to experience. It was, in fact, unlike anything that I have experienced.
Most of us, if not all of us, have experienced periods of nausea and vomiting. Most of us, at some time in our lives, have experienced diarrhoea. Most of us have also experienced level of abdominal pain and discomfort. But seldom do all three come with extreme intensity at the same time. It was, quite clearly, the most severe pain that I have ever experienced in my life, and I experienced it all in the privacy of my small toilet cubical at Nairobi airport.
Never in human history has a toilet cubical ever been the location of such extreme and fervent, sincere prayer.
Never in human history has a toilet cubical ever been the location of such extreme and fervent, sincere prayer. Not only was I faced with the embarrassing dilemma of deciding which end should be directed at the toilet bowl as everything within my body, apparently, wanted be be outside of it. Such was the intensity of my stomach cramps that I considered the very real possibility that I might actually be dying. Seriously. If I’d had more strength I might have acted upon my first impulse, which was to cry for help. But I also realised that for anyone to help me they would need to break down the door just to get into the cubicle. As the intensity of pain washed over me all of my strength had departed. Sweat poured from my all of my pores as a prayer so desperate, a plea so pure and so sincere, so full of desperate emotion must have cut through the heavens straight to the throne of God and alerted all angels within 1000 kilometres. Quite frankly, I have never prayed with such pure and desperate intent in all of my life.
Just as my lavatorial intercession reached its highest fervour, the pain immediately started to subside. Instead of desperate pleas, my fervent prayers turned to fervent praise, which must have ascended to the throne of God like pure incense. But in the aftermath of what had just happened, what I could smell on earth was nothing at all like pure incense. Thankfully the pain lifted and left me sitting, trembling, with my head, face and shirt completely drenched with perspiration.
…everything within my body, apparently, wanted be be outside of it.
In an event of providence, for which I shall be forever grateful, I had packed a change of clothes in my hand luggage (an always advisable precaution for every smart traveller) and after my strength had returned I was able to clean myself up — along with the cubicle.
It was one of those events that you never forget, however much you may want to. Not only was it a reminder of my human frailty, but it was a stark reminder of the sure promise, “whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved”. I did not think that it were possible for me to pray that way — to come to God with such complete and utter fervent desperation. But in my hour of greatest need, alone and severely afflicted, without anyone else to call on or to reply upon, God met me there in that cubicle and administered his healing touch. I returned to the departure lounge just in time to board the plane (and decided not to eat the complimentary meal on that flight). I realised that day there is no such thing as a lone traveller — the Lord is with us always.
“Call to Me and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.” ~ Jeremiah 33:3
