Just after 5am on Tuesday I landed at Heathrow Airport.

As always, the excitement of a new challenge helped outweigh the wrung-out feeling of a long-haul flight across the world.

My body had no idea what time zone it was meant to believe in, and my mind wrestled with what I had left behind and where I was heading.

Despite the early hour, there, waiting for me, was a bloke named George.

Immaculately dressed and a smile like a lighthouse, he shook my hand before walking me out into the darkness and into an electric Mercedes-Benz.

With a four-and-a-half-hour drive to Manchester in front of us for my role as head coach of the Manchester Super Giants, it was only George’s smile and hospitality that gave me any sense of enthusiasm for the commute.

For the first hour we said almost nothing. I had my eyes shut, chasing a bit of sleep that never came.

Then, there was a little bit of small talk.

When we pulled off the motorway for a coffee, two strangers came up and asked if I’d be coaching England. We had a good laugh and went on our merry ways.

By the time we got back to the car, George, a Ghanaian, who admitted he had no idea about cricket, asked me what I did for a living.

I explained.

And then George told me his story. It turns out he’s a pastor. When he started talking about the scriptures, his whole face changed. His quiet passion wasn’t something I was expecting from a bloke who’d been silent for the start.

For the next two hours to Manchester we talked about faith, hope, love, character through adversity, and the strangulation of fear as the shadow to hope.

Here we were, two strangers from opposite ends of the earth, talking about our faith and wondering if it could be a remedy of sorts for so many of the problems facing the world today.

Whether in Australia, England, Ghana or India, the thing that strikes me is that we may all live in different worlds, but we are all wrestling with the same stuff.

Our kids are growing up with wars, political turmoil, AI, extortion, cost-of-living crises, debts their kids will be paying off for decades, and more mental health issues than ever before.

These matters are on every screen, in every pocket, 24 hours of the day.

Through George, and other strong influences in my life, I get the sense the need for faith and hope is more prevalent than ever before. Faith, hope, love and kindness — not as a slogan, but as a foundation for helping people through the shadows of the day.

I don’t say this lightly, and I’m careful writing it down, because faith is a personal thing and I have never pushed mine on anyone, regardless of how important it is to me.

I know some people are spooked by anything spiritual. Others flat-out don’t believe. While others are fanatical in their beliefs.

I respect everyone’s choice to be at whatever end of the scale they choose.

So, this is me thinking out loud, sitting in a different country away from home, trying to make sense of why faith and religion have mattered so much to so many people for so long.

One of the lessons I have learned about faith is that it’s opposite isn’t science, or logic, or being sensible. The opposite of faith is fear.

And it seems to me that fear is having a field day right now.

So much of what we call anxiety and depression grows in the gap where hope used to be.

When hope runs out, people go looking for an exit, through the bottle, through drugs — and at the darkest end — as an exit from life itself.

When I quizzed George about this, he just smiled, nodded his head knowingly and said: “Oh yes, there is the scripture from the Hebrews which states, ‘faith is the confidence in what we hope for, and the assurance in what we do not see’.”

He followed that up straight away with: “And of course, as 1 Corinthians 13:13 says, ‘And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love’.” He explained. “Those are the closing lines of Paul’s famous chapter on love, you know, ‘love is patient, love is kind’, that is often read at weddings. My gosh, the world needs plenty of this right now.”

I simply smiled at his quiet, reverent passion for goodness.

One night before a Test match against South Africa I was unable to sleep from the nerves.

I rang women tennis’s greatest-ever player Margaret Court for her advice. She simply said: “Remember the scripture Justin, ‘God doesn’t give us a spirit of fear, but of love, power and a sound mind’. You are nervous because you are scared; be bold, clear your mind, and go to sleep.”

When I shared this with George, he clapped his hands, laughed and asked me how I went.

“I scored a hundred the next day”, I replied.

You can imagine George’s delight. And mine at the time.

Not long ago I heard from a good mate about 1000 odd people being baptised in the Swan River on Good Friday through the Kingdom City Church. One thousand. Friends that were there talk of people being set free from addiction, now living lives with purpose; young men who’d hit rock bottom with their mental health and somehow finding their way back to a lighter, brighter future.

Sceptical as some are about the theology, you can’t argue with a person who was drowning and is now swimming.

You see it in sport too, and never more than at the World Cup that’s been playing out across the US, Canada and Mexico these past few weeks. Watch closely after the final whistle and you’ll see whole teams sink to their knees, arms around each other, praying in the middle of a stadium built for the exact opposite of stillness.

After Germany scored seven goals against Curaçao, players from both sides gathered in a circle to pray together. One of the Germans, Felix Nmecha, put it in a way I thought was powerful: “During the game we are opponents, but after the game we are all Christians and we are brothers.”

These are people with everything the world says should make you content, and still, they reach for something bigger than the scoreboard. Different faiths, same instinct, to look up and say thank you.

About 12 years ago, I spoke about my faith in a magazine feature. The main thing I remember is that after it was published in the STM magazine, I was sent about 100 pairs of rosary beads from all around Australia. I still smile about it now.

Re-reading the article this week, I’ve realised a lot has happened in those 12 years. I’ve had the highest highs this life can offer and some of the lowest lows.

I lost my Mum. I’ve lost my best mate, friends, colleagues, people I loved. Through every bit of that rollercoaster, my faith is what held the floor steady under my feet. I’m not saying it made the grief smaller. I’m saying it gave me somewhere to stand while I carried it.

Through those 12 years I met the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu. After a dinner, he encouraged me to return to my hotel, take the bible from the drawer and read Romans 5.

What a guide that turned out to be. The idea that suffering, of all things, can produce perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope.

Romans 5 sits alongside a handful of scriptures I come back to again and again as a source of inspiration.

George and I never solved the world’s problems on our drive this week, but somewhere along the M6 he gave me a reminder that faith and hope often go hand in hand.

I’m at the start of a new adventure over here at the UK’s Hundred cricket competition, a long way from home, in a country full of the same worries as ours.

I got here in an electric Mercedes driven by a smiling and thoughtful pastor from Ghana who reminded me of the simplest thing.

With a bit of faith, a bit of hope, a lot of love, and a passion for goodness, our kids will grow up in a world that is happier and safer than it seems to be today.