Don't you know who I am?

I suspect that tempers boil a little quicker in hot climates. Make the weather particularly humid, and it gets even quicker. Add an Air Asia flight to the mix, and the boiling point is probably brought down a good (or bad) ten degrees.

When I first came to Sabah, I came knowingly as a servant. I came determined to accept whatever situation I was put in. This proved harder than I had thought it would be, though sometimes the situations I found myself in were far easier than I had expected (and also sometimes far harder). I was sometimes looked after very well, sometimes not at all. Often I was given nice, comfortable accommodation. Often that accommodation came with heavy responsibilities, eg. looking after 8 teenage boys. I was required, I suppose, to put Philippians 4:12-13 to the test.

This time round, I told myself that I was going to come with no expectations, to once again accept whatever situation I found myself in. If I was treated like a celebrity, so be it. If I was treated like dirt, well, I didn't much fancy that, but so be it, I suppose. But in my heart I said, "But really they should treat me like a long-lost friend."

And in Tawau that's how I was treated, mostly. In KK it's been a bit different so far. The friend who was supposed to pick me up from the airport didn't. The room that I had stayed in on my first night here - small but nice, and with an en-suite - had been changed to a smaller one, with no en-suite, and where the adjoining communal bathroom seemed to have no hot water and not even really something I would consider a shower.

Pride, of course, kicks in very quickly in these circumstances. "Don't you know who I am?" the fleshly spirit rages.

Yes, there are many in Malaysia with better accommodation than I will have tonight. Yes, it is annoying that I was not collected from the airport. Yes, it is frustrating that these are my friends who seem to be letting me down.

Then I think of a garden where the best of all men knelt crying and sweating blood while his closest friends slept and their spirits began to prepare to abandon, even deny, him. If anyone deserved to say, "Don't you know who I am?", it was him. Yet he never did. The one time he declared his identity, it was at an impromptu and shoddy trial for his death, and the declaration sealed his fate.

My flesh tells me I should not have to put up with this on a holiday. "Go and book yourself into a hotel where at least they'll book you a taxi and give you breakfast", it says. But then my mind is half-drawn back to the one who can show me how to handle this situation properly, and I am humbled.

Who am I? I am nothing, if I am not like Him.