“Let me just upgrade you to business class”, the Emirates gate agent handed me a new boarding pass out of nowhere.
After a long Dubai layover, jet-lagged and confused, I was just a 22-year-old student dressed in flip-flops, t-shirt, and shorts headed to the UK to study abroad.
That was 2007. Never mind if I was judged from head to toe when I got to my seat — I enjoyed my maiden inflight wine and knocked myself out!
That was also the start of my uncommon pursuit of the serial tentmaker life I had for two decades since the dream was first conceived in my spirit in 2005. I was in my penultimate year at the University of Melbourne, I wasted no time to get on with the adventure. I opted to complete my final semester abroad in Nottingham, UK, in 2007.
But I had actually no real idea where to go or how it was to unfold. I just knew in my spirit that I had to get out there. Drawn to rock music, I remember seeing a ‘London Calling’ poster at a poster fair held at my university. So I bought a one-way ticket to London.
(I now call this adventure 1.0 as I recently learned about the two halves of life or the six-stage life journey, which has helped me in evolving from 1.0 to 2.0 as I enter second half or stages 4-6. Much of what they call midlife crisis is the struggle to evolve from 1.0 to 2.0.)
That Emirates flight to London was to be the first of the many random free business class upgrades (and free travels) in my many years on the road as a young tentmaker living a missional life with little to show but was often randomly “chosen” for — so much of my travels from flights to hotels and everything in between were just supernatural provisions.
When I first arrived in London in Spring 2007, I lived with my aunt, C, in a modest townhome with her family. Aunt C was a church worker and her immigrant journey to the UK in her youth doing a variety of uncommon jobs to survive would inspire me too.
I am indebted to her for the three months she took me in in the same way she was indebted to my grandfather who cared for her as his own child. As I could not pay rent, but God had His ideas that would also speak to me of His provision for taking the uncommon journey.
Summer had come around, my aunt and I came across heavily discounted British Airways’ Business Class tickets to Singapore going for the price of Budget Airline tickets i.e., $2500 round-trip tickets selling for $500. We grabbed them in a heartbeat.
Aunt C bought the tickets for her entire family of five.
A day later, we got a call from a travel agent informing us about a technical glitch on their website. The discounted tickets were an error. Aunt C was gutted. It was one of those ‘too good to be true’ things. In that moment, however, I felt a prompting in my spirit to ask them if there was to be any compensation for the error. It was a bizarre ask as they had put it quite plainly that it was a technical issue rather than a human error.
The next day, the agent would write back to me that she got approval from her manager to let the six of us fly for FREE in ‘Economy’ if we would like that as compensation. Why, yes!
They refunded us the monies in full and issued the six tickets immediately. I still remember how ecstatic my aunt was to this day.
That was my first year out in the wild and a jet-setting twentysomething life. Starting out in London where it would mark a missional call upon my life. Just pack and go, He’s got it.
That ‘random’ summer trip to Singapore would signpost a move to Southeast Asia in 2008, where I’d sojourn in Southeast Asia until 2012 as a tentmaker and never lacked.
Last week, I caught up with one of our young urban missionaries who was discerning financial providence.
“He always provides just enough for another month”, I shared. “But He will also surprise and lavish on us for He is a God of more than enough.” 2 Corinthians 9:8-11
Such is the (sweet) tension. Poverty in the ‘voluntary’ sense is a spiritual gift anchored in the ability to live simply. For those with a missional call to the underserved, this spiritual gift is His equipping. If you are not, fret not – stay missional in your sphere of influence, you will too, live stories of His wild adventure.
honest & hygge 