About Those Risks

 Tony and I were reading our favourite devotional author, Oswald Chambers, and on May 30th, he says, (based on Luke 9:61), “Lord I will follow thee; but……).


Oswald’s poses the question, “Supposing God tells you to do something which is an enormous test to your common sense …… what are you going to do?”


We had to stop and think.  We haven’t  EVER thought we did something on the Lord's instructions that was contrary to common sense, but we laughed when we agreed that a lot of you might agree that THIS trip might be just that.  I’ll have to say that we’ve had a fair few ‘adventures’ lately that might have been avoided by us staying home. But again, we feel the warmth of His Hand, guiding us thru the days.


But then, as we continued talking, we remembered an escapade what might be called “against all reason”.  In 1977 we went to Africa a second time, after leaving Zambia in 1975. It may have been against ‘common sense’ but I don’t think it ever felt that way to us.  


For a number of reasons, mostly my health, recovering from a malignant melanoma, the Foreign Mission Board said we had to be sensible and wait another year to see if I was OK. We could do anything we wanted to do during that time.  They even gave us a date 13 months later when they would agree to appoint us.


So we did possibly the less sensible thing and headed back for Africa.  I was pregnant with our second child and we had a 2 yr old.  In our minds, we had everything covered, because we’d be working in a hospital in Rhodesia where Tony’s parents were.  Rhodesia was in the beginning of a war, but it was still listed as relatively safe.  I’d had such a stellar pregnancy and delivery with the first one, we were going to a Baptist hospital in the bush, so we felt that we were more than good to go.


It wasn’t sensible, but we were 27 and 29 and we were unstoppable.


What actually happened was worse than we could have ever imagined, but thankfully God had His hand on everything, and now we’re who we are because we did the ‘insensible’ thing.


Just before we left the States, we got a phone call saying our Rhodesian visas had been mysteriously denied (another story for another time), and would we go to Liberia instead?  


Sure, we thought, no worries ….. WHERE is Liberia?


We arrived, we loved being Dorm parents to the Baptist teenagers who needed to attend high school in the capital city of Monrovia.


A few months into our year’s assignment, I miscarried with a very rare and unknown to me and many others, “Placenta Accreta” (don’t look it up) and almost died.


But wait……there’s more.  The night I was dying in the Sudan Interior Mission hospital (very good and famous place 40 miles outside of Monrovia), the hospital where we were SUPPOSED to be posted at in Rhodesia, suffered an overrun of terrorists who were threatening to kill all the missionaries.  By God’s grace, Archie Dunaway intercepted them and while he was being killed, the others (including the surgeons who would have been dealing with my haemorrhaging), were all able to run and hide.


We’ll never know if God wanted us in Liberia so that I would be safe, or just wanted us to do something “insensible” so that He could make us who we are today. Lots of questions when I get to Heaven …


Moral of the story; Go ahead and take that ‘insensible’ risk, but first, check and make sure the Lord has asked you to do it.


Marsha


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