I did not plan to have a life-changing encounter with God on a WestJet regional flight to Moncton.
The morning started in pure chaos. New phone. Alarm set for 5:30 PM instead of AM. My ride was already waiting outside when I woke up, and we were out the door by 6:15. I had a guitar with me — which meant oversize baggage, possibly a longer security line, which meant I was now running the math on whether this was actually going to happen. Gate by 7:45. I kept refreshing the time on my phone like that was somehow going to help.
And underneath all of that was something quieter and heavier — the people who had generously covered this trip so I could go spend a weekend serving in worship. I didn’t want to let them down. I didn’t want to let myself down. The only thing I could do at that point was pray, and I did, out loud under my breath in an airport that probably had better things to listen to. God, please bend time. Slow it down. Just let me make this flight.
After running halfway across the airport to my gate, I made it with ten minutes to spare.
I got on the plane relieved, grateful, and although I was slightly sweaty from my morning run, ready for whatever God had ahead — then promptly wedged myself into a seat where the person in front of me had already reclined fully, my knees were somewhere they shouldn’t be, and I was chewing gum like my life depended on it because my ears don’t handle pressure well. Not exactly a picture of composed ministry readiness.
I put my AirPods in and opened whatever had recently downloaded to my device. It was a compilation album called House of Worship. Songs I have heard literally hundreds of times. Songs I have led hundreds of times — for congregations, conferences, youth camps, Sunday mornings, late-night prayer sets. These are songs I could sing in my sleep.
What happened next I genuinely did not see coming.
The tears just came. Not quietly, either. Not the kind where you dab your eye and collect yourself — the kind where your whole chest fills up with something you can’t name, and your face stops cooperating, and the person in the seat next to you starts glancing over. And I could not have cared less. I wasn’t embarrassed. I wasn’t trying to hold it together. All I wanted was to stay right there and keep receiving whatever this was.
What it was, was Love. Not a feeling — a Person. Total acceptance. Total peace. An overwhelming fullness that had nothing to do with the cramped seat or the stressful morning or anything in my circumstances, and everything to do with who God simply is.
I walked off that plane still undone. Still falling apart in the best possible way. The person waiting to meet me got the full version of that, whether they were ready for it or not.
Here’s what it reminded me of, and what I think we too easily forget: love isn’t something God sends from a distance. Neither is peace, or grace. These aren’t things He has — they’re things He is.
John writes that God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5). He doesn’t carry light. He doesn’t turn it on when He enters the room. He simply is light, and darkness cannot coexist with His presence — it just has nowhere to go. It’s the same when John says God is love (1 John 4:8). That’s not a characteristic on a list. That’s a statement about His essence.
And here is where it gets breathtaking. We tend to read 1 Corinthians 13 as instructions for us — how to love better, how to be more patient and kind. But read it again, this time putting God’s name in place of the word “love”:
God is patient. God is kind. He does not envy, He does not boast, He is not proud. He does not dishonour others. He is not self-seeking. He is not easily angered. He keeps no record of wrongs. He does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. He always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. God never fails.
That’s not poetry. That’s a portrait.
That is the Person who found me at 30,000 feet, chewing gum with my knees against the back of someone’s reclined seat, stressed from a morning that started on the wrong side of a phone alarm — and simply loved me until I couldn’t hold myself together anymore.
He’s not patient with you in theory. He is patience. He’s not kind when He gets around to it. He is kindness. He doesn’t check a box labelled “keeps no record of wrongs.” There is simply no record. It doesn’t exist.
That’s what happened to me. Somewhere between Montreal and Moncton, Love just found me. Not in a church, not in a quiet moment — in the middle of the mess. He didn’t wait for me to be composed. He just showed up. He’ll do the same for you.
If you want to position yourself to receive it, here’s where I’d start:
Get quiet, even briefly. You don’t need an hour. You need a moment where you stop performing and stop producing and just stop. Put some worship music on. Sit in your car before you go inside. Let there be space.
Open your hands. Not metaphorically — literally. It’s a posture of surrender that your body understands even when your mind is still catching up. And just say something like: I receive You. Not what You can give me — You. Come as You are.
Let yourself feel it. We are so trained to manage our emotions in spiritual spaces. If something starts to move in you, don’t tidy it up. Don’t explain it away. Just stay there. Let Love do what Love does.
That’s it. No formula. No five steps to a deeper walk. Just a person, opened up, saying yes to being found.
Because when that love finds you — and it will — there is only one thing left to say:
“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.” — 1 John 4:18