A Tale of Two Sydneys by Phil Callaway

I love travel stories. The most memorable are those in which something goes badly wrong. I have lost my passport, my luggage, and my lunch on a bumpy flight. But that’s small potatoes compared to the adventures of the unwitting travellers you’re about to meet.

Brit Adams was passing through Munich, Germany. As he waited for a cab, he cozied up in the luggage hold of a coach to stay warm and woke hours later in Switzerland. Brit’s passport, phone, and money were back on the other side of the Swiss-German border. I’m happy to report he’s fine.

The BBC reported that two ladies were arrested when they tried to get a 91-year old gentleman onto a plane to Germany. The problem? The dear man had been deceased for 12 hours. The ladies had been pushing him around in a wheelchair all day. They insisted they thought he was just sleeping.

Not all travellers get where they’re going. Milan Schipper, a Dutch teen, found a great deal on a flight from Amsterdam to Sydney. He’d always wanted to see Australia and the flight was $300 cheaper than the others. But his first stop was in Toronto, where he climbed onto a smaller plane. Milan later said, “I saw the flight plan was going to go right, not left. It was about that time I realized there was another Sydney.” A few hours later Milan touched down in the middle of a Canadian blizzard, in Sydney, Nova Scotia, 17,000 kilometers off course, wearing a T-shirt, sweatpants and a thin jacket. Sympathetic airline personnel returned him to Toronto, then to Amsterdam, where his mostly amused father picked him up.

Now, I don’t know of anyone who willingly set out to veer 10,000 miles off course into a blizzard. But I have to ask you when your life comes to an end will you arrive where you hoped you would?

There’s a way to be sure. A little kid was asked, “How do you get to Heaven?” He said, “You gotta be dead.” When I was just a boy, my mother told me how to get there. Her words came from the Bible. “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” Not work harder, or be nicer. Just believe that Jesus paid it all. The joy and hope that simple decision has brought me are beyond belief. Every airport has a terminal, and we’re all terminal, so trust Him today.