We’re on a 26 hour train journey (someone asked me if that meant it was an overnight train and I wasn’t sure how to answer) from Cape Town to Johannesburg. The Shosholoza “Express”. In fact, let’s go with The Shosholoza “””Express””” as I feel it needs several more sarcastic inverted commas. It will arrive between 2 and 6 hours late if anyone and everyone is to be believed. We have already (7 hours in) had stoppages of over an hour for a broken down train ahead of us to be fixed and signal failure. It is sun-burst-hot in our compact and bijou 2 person cell.

We have a padded bench and a small fold down table which sits on a tiny sink with hot and warm running water, 4 hooks, 3 pegs and, halfway up the wall, a fold out narrow bed to call our own.

The compartment is a shade over 6 feet long by 4 feet wide. A mirror on the door and a small mirror above the sink give the impression, if you sit in the right spot and catch the right engle of reflection that the cabin is actually vast (at least, really really long and thin). But you can’t fool yourself for long. On the plus side, there are excellent showers and proper loos at the end of each carriage and tickets only cost £34. (For the train journey, not for the loos.)

There is a thickish black bar half way down the carriage window separating the top pane from the bottom one – I’m just the wrong height for this compartment – when I sit on the bench and look out of the window it’s like the whole of the South African countryside is posing for a pornographic picture.

The train does have air conditioning but, unfortunately, and sweatily, the train company do not switch it on as it “costs too much to run”. But, on the huge plus side, there is a wonderful breeze in the long corridor which runs alongside the cells – so most of life takes place out there. Ella is in her element! It took the train to come to a standstill in the simmering aridity of the Karoo for the ice to be broken – give people something to moan about and from then on, getting to know one another is easy.

The couple in the compartment to our left are Vineyard Church members, the next compartment on, Pentecostal. To our right an old guy is spending the journey reading a huge old bible and in the cell to his right, a lady who has an itinerant ministry in the Pentecostal church. As a country, it seems that (especially among the poor), faith plays a much larger role than in the U K.

Sitting in our cabin it feels that for the first time since we touched down just over a week ago I’ve got time to reflect on how what we’re doing feels now that we’re so far from what has been our ‘normal’ life for the past many years.

So far, the sabbath year seems like an incredible opportunity – and a real gift. A gift of time. Time to look back on 20 years of ministry and look forward to 20 more. Shedding so much “stuff” and becoming voluntarily jobless and homeless has brought with it a huge sense of release and possibility. We really could do anything. It’s incredibly liberating to know that we would be free to pick many different paths – to choose something we feel would both honour a commitment to living out our faith and using the experiences and wisdom we’ve gained over the first half of life to make the most of the second half.

Many don’t stop mid life and ask – am I doing (or, still doing) what I should be doing or am I simply doing what I do and is this what I want to do for the next part of life.

A fair number of people have bandied about the mid-life crisis phrase and spoken of it as a time studded with and prompted by something negative – but a time of crisis is primarily a balancing point: a point which causes a decision to have to be made. The event or events which bring about a crisis point may be negative or positive (the loss of a loved one, winning the lottery) – it’s what direction we choose to depart down following the ‘crisis’ that matters.

Someone told me that the Chinese word for ‘crisis’ and ‘opportunity’ are the same. (Trust the deep thinking Chinese to nail it.)

I feel incredibly excited that we have put in place the opportunity to look at the questions that mid-life should ask us all to answer. We spend the first half of life learning who we are – what we can do – what fears drive us – what we are sub-consciously trying to prove/escape from/achieve and perhaps the second half of life should be spent using that experience to live with confidence as the people we should by now know ourselves to be.

And who’s to say that Joseph (previous blog post), who has spent decades surviving on tiny tips from people who he has helped in tiny ways, most recently (for the last decade or so) by watching their cars for them while they shop, a 2 rand (12p) tip is about average. He welcomes all with a huge smile and tells them God loves them and quotes a bible verse or two and in a 45 second encounter has left you 12 pence poorer and a little bit richer.

During his mid life he responded to God’s call to “Go and tell people the good news of my love for them.”

Who’s to know whether his life has had more or less impact than yours or mine. More or less worth.

We”re heading for Johannesburg which is a place where, if the internet is to be believed, you will be robbed, stabbed and conned even as you are stepping off the train. I don’t tend to believe the internet and figure that if you type in “what could go wrong in Johannesburg” you’ve got to be prepared for some scare stories.

But we don’t get there for another 20 hours or so – and a long journey lays ahead, mostly through what we’re in at the moment, a fairly barren area of South Africa called the Karoo – which is probably one of the top ten worst places on the planet in which to play I Spy. Mile after mile after many more miles (about 500 of them) of scrubland and the occasional rock.

We are learning the joys of only traveling with a carry-on bag each: we can take all our stuff with us when we go to the buffet car, and packing when leaving one place to go to another is dead easy. However. It has meant compromising on some things – Ella poses with our only towel. Ultra-Super-Absorbent (or so it said on the pack) but not exactly the kind of thing you can wrap around you and wander back from the shower in.

The train manager just came in to see if we wanted to upgrade to a 4 person cabin as there are some available now that we’ve left the last station we’ll be stopping at today but it’s many carriages away and for all its failings we kind of like our little sauna. And the people around are fascinating. We could have forked out a lot more cash and gone on the premier train but I’m glad we didn’t. I bet out of the two services we’ve got the more interesting travelling companions – the lady a few doors along has brought her two parakeets with her and a shed load of plants – her cabin looks like a jungle.