I did not want to be on that train.

Two and a half days in a sleeper coach from Chennai to West Bengal, carrying equipment worth millions in plain suitcases, no budget for anything better, my team was unhappy, and me holding it all together on the outside while quietly falling apart on the inside. It was dirty, exhausting, and deeply uncomfortable in ways I was not prepared for.

I remember lying there that night, unable to sleep, surrounded by strangers crammed into every available space. The smell was overwhelming. My patience was completely gone. My compassion was nowhere to be found. If you have travelled in those trains in India, you can picture what I am saying right now. I was not thinking about ministry or mission or God. I was thinking about survival and getting through the next hour.

And yet that journey changed me more than almost any comfortable experience ever has.

That is the thing about God. He does not always work through the beautiful, prepared, and peaceful moments. Some of His most careful and intentional work happens in the chaotic, unplanned, and deeply uncomfortable ones. The train I hated became the classroom I needed.

How often do we spend our lives asking God to remove the difficulty, when the difficulty is actually the method? We pray for the storm to stop, not realizing we are learning to walk on water precisely because the storm is here. We ask God to explain the detour, not knowing that the detour is the destination.

The discomfort was not a sign that God had forgotten me. It was a sign that He trusted me with a lesson that comfort could never teach.

Maybe you are in a place right now that you never chose and would never choose. A season that does not match anything you prayed for. A road that looks nothing like the one you expected to be on.

God is not absent from that place. He is often most present in the exact places we find most difficult. He was in that train coach with me, and He is wherever you are today. Hold on to Him; He never wastes a single mile of it.