Dave Edgren recounts a ten-hour airport ordeal in Melbourne and asks why adversity makes people bitter instead of better. He argues that following Jesus means absorbing bitterness for others' sake, transforming trials into steps toward an eternal kingdom.
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After 10 hours of going back and forth to the service desk and talking to various agents, I said to the one who I was working with this time, "You know, airports are the Mecca for character development. You go through something like this and you either become a better person or you become a bitter person." And she laughed and said, "Yeah, we see far too many of the bitter kind." Hello Adventist Today family. I'm Dave Edgren, and I'm in New Zealand doing some interviewing for the Hope Channel. That story came from yesterday. I spent 10 hours at the Melbourne airport. I was supposed to have a flight at 9:30, but it was cancelled. So I was lined up for the 11 o'clock, and I needed an ETA. An ETA? What's that? Electronic Transport Authority. Never heard of one before to get to New Zealand. Well, they just started in October, so 'Apply online. It'll only take a few minutes, maybe an hour.' So I applied. An hour and a half later, I went up to the service desk for the first time. What am I going to do? I'm going to miss my flight. It hasn't come yet. She said, 'Oh, we can bump you to the next flight. Your first flight goes to Sydney, and then every hour we have one to Sydney, and you've got 4 hours in Sydney. So you'll be fine.' Another hour went by. I went up to the service desk again. Another hour went by. I went up again and said, 'But what if I miss this one? I won't make the connecting flight.' And she said, 'That's okay. There's another direct flight at 6 o'clock tonight.' 45. So when it got to about 4 o'clock, I decided to call the New Zealand consulate myself, and I got on the phone and I waited 45 minutes on hold, and then I got a lovely lady with a beautiful accent, and she talked to me for a while, and she said, "I'm sorry, we can't push that any faster. It's an automated system. There's no way to make it go any faster." And I said, "Well, I'm at the airport, and the last flight for today leaves in just a few minutes, and I need to get on that flight. Is there any anything you can do. And she said, believe this or not, she said, well, there is a secret phone number. And now that I've told you that, you can go and tell the service desk people that they can use that number. They know the number, but they're only allowed to use it if we give them permission. So I went back over there and said, evidently there's a secret number and you now have permission to use it. And she said, yes, I know that number. And she picked up the phone and she called and she called the consulate over here. And within 5 minutes I had a pre-approval on my ETA and I was on that flight. Oh, as I was driving, because when I got to New Zealand, I got there at about 1 o'clock in the morning and I got my car and I said, I'm going to start driving because I had a 4.5-hour drive time to drive. So as I'm driving and it's dark and I'm going through these country roads and it's a fun experience, you know, driving in, in a another place. And I was thinking about what happened, and I was thinking, why? Why is it that there's so many people who go bitter instead of better when adversity happens? You know, adversity makes us stronger. Muscle gets stronger when it tears. Why is it that so many people, when they go through hard times in life, they become bitter instead of better? I don't know the answer for everyone, but I know the answer for me. And it's because I'm not a leader, I'm a follower. And I'm following a man named Jesus. And Jesus, Isaiah tells us, he calls him the suffering servant. Jesus was able to take suffering on himself, to take bitterness onto himself and say, I will soak up this bitterness to make it better for others. And he was able to take adversity on our behalf and see that this bitterness was only for a time. And it would make it possible for us to have a better future. Paul, when he's reflecting on it, he says, Jesus, who for the joy set before him endured the cross. So because of the better that was coming, the joy set before him, he was able to endure the bitter, the cross, now, so that we could have eternal life. You know, that doesn't— that's not the beginning of that passage in Hebrews 12. It starts by saying, fix your eyes on Jesus. And actually, before that, it says, let your character be like the character of Christ, who for the joy set before him endured the cross. Fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. Follow Jesus, and all of the adversity that comes up in life becomes opportunities for you to absorb the bitter to make it better for other people, so that you could say, "There's a better kingdom than the one we're living in, and because I am a citizen of that kingdom, because I have all the paperwork and all the passports and all the rubber stamps and whatever I need to get into that kingdom, I don't get bitter when adversity in this kingdom comes, because I know there's a better kingdom." Jesus says to you, "Follow me. Follow me and lead people to the better kingdom."
