God Shows Up in the Details at Heathrow Airport

In last Friday’s blog, I mentioned a myriad of concerns on my mind that week. One of them mentioned an upcoming trip to Eastern Europe. I wrote this:

Think about boarding a Boeing 747 next week and flying to London enroute to Hungary and eventually Slovakia. I’m responsible for taking a 38-year-old single mom and her 16-year-old daughter with me. They’ve never traveled overseas.

I’m also responsible to meet up with my 28-year-old niece and a 20-year-old second cousin at Heathrow Airport and ensure we all get to Budapest okay.

“God, I’m directionally challenged and I’ll be running on jetlag by then. Please help us find each other at Heathrow and keep us all safe.”

Anyone traveling through Heathrow Airport knows that it’s massive. And busy. Very, very busy with numerous international flights arriving and departing hourly.

Now imagine this

On Monday, my niece—Amanda—and cousin’s daughter—Mikayala—flew from Calgary. I flew from Vancouver. We left our departure cities at approximately the same time. Their flight was scheduled to arrive in London approximately one hour before mine.

My flight landed on time but sat on the tarmac for 90 minutes before finding a berth to park. I immediately texted Amanda to let her know I was at the airport but didn’t know when I’d reach the terminal where we were to meet due to the unexpected delay. She didn’t respond.

Did she receive my text? I wondered. Maybe she’s going through security now and can’t respond. Or maybe my first-ever European phone plan isn’t working. God, please help me find the girls so I can ensure we catch the flight to Budapest.

At last the pilot announced that he’d received clearance to park the plane. Another 20 minutes passed before we deboarded. Still no text reply from Amanda. My travel companions and I boarded a shuttle bus that took us to Terminal 3 where we proceeded towards the security check.

That’s when I began second-guessing whether or not gel capsules and lip gloss I’d packed would cause me grief if not packed in the permissible size bag. I bent over and quickly reorganized those things. Moments later, an officer stepped between us and the folks in front of us. “You go to that line,” he said, pointing to the left. We obeyed and took our places behind two young women waiting their turn.

One’s face was slightly turned, and I could see her profile. Imagine my amazement and delight when I recognized her as Mikayla! Beside her stood Amanda, who hadn’t received my text message because she hadn’t yet taken her phone off airplane mode.

God answered my prayer extraordinarily

God not only answered my prayer to help us find each other, He did it in an extraordinary way. Humanly speaking, imagine the odds of ending up side by side in the security line at such a massive airport after traveling from two departure cities, experiencing significant delay on the tarmac, and even stopping to rearrange my toiletries bag.

I’d imagined looking for the girls in the massive waiting area at Terminal 3, hoping to find them at a pre-arranged Starbucks. God made things much simpler by plunking us together before even heading to that massive waiting area with its thousands of moving bodies.

Ephesians 3:20 has long been one of my favorite scriptures:

“Now glory be to God! By his mighty power at work within us, he is able to accomplish infinitely more than we would ever dare to ask or hope.”

I love it when God answers prayer in ways that defy human explanation. In this case, He made His presence undeniably obvious, and I’ll forever remember that moment.