Peace Unexpected

 Dear Friends,

Welcome back!  As usual, your comments always greatly encourage us, and it was so nice of so many to appreciate my blog last week about Lottie Moon.  She was an amazing missionary for sure.  During our time on the field, I would often wonder how I might have responded to the kinds of things she encountered.

 And I wasn’t alone in my musings. Tony went through his share of “what iffings”, especially when thinking about those times when we came so close to situations of deadly possibilities. (more so in our first years in Africa than later in Japan). It would sometimes drive him to distraction, wondering if he would step up and place his life between me and whatever was trying to get to me … or if he would say something like, “Hey, you take care; I’ll be right back.”

My response was to remind him that God did NOT put him in those situations he was imagining, and if He did, God would have certainly given him what he needed, when he needed it.

And I guess I could say the same thing to myself.

Thoughts like that sometimes popped up as Tony and I shared meals recently with a variety of people on this last cruise from New York to Sydney. 

Two folks, for example, were a delightful couple, Jewish nationals who confessed that they had come on this cruise just to have a break from the daily missile attacks and threats on every level. 

I think they enjoyed our company. Even though we were Christians, they could still talk about our common Old Testament roots. Tony was even able to help them understand some of the Hebrew texts they brought up, from a Christian perspective. We can hope that those Messianic verses we talked about gave them something to chew on after they got home. 

Another night we sat down with a nice couple about our age. As the conversation started up, we realized that the couple had been missionaries in Papua New Guinea and boy did they have some great stories to share!  

Some of those in fact will probably turn up in our upcoming book, Stories in Time,  a collection of testimonies from and about people who in their final moments of life demonstrated beyond a doubt that they were not alone in their journey through the veil. (Shameless advertisement, sorry about that!)

Here’s a teaser you’re gonna love: Bill, the husband, was a missionary

bush pilot who spent a lot of time transporting fellow missionaries, nationals and medical personnel around the country. I think it would be better if I let him tell the story in his own words:

“Flying in PNG was always an adventure but there was one day I’ll never forget.  It was often particularly treacherous when I had to deal with both the high mountains that surrounded us AND the unexpected storms that seemed to come out of nowhere.

“On that day, I was carrying several passengers from one mission station to another.  The weather was threatening, but it looked like I could climb up and over a range of mountains, through the clouds and safely down the other side. I’d done this many times, and I didn’t expect any difficulties

“Unfortunately, the situation suddenly turned, and I was sucked up into the very thunderstorm cloud I was manoeuvring to avoid. Every time I tried to turn the plane around to a certain heading, the plane would be flipped upside down and the doors would pop open. Rain poured in. Finally, I ran out of strategies and picked up the radio to give a mayday message.

“But then something strange happened. I suddenly found myself totally at peace, quite surprisingly, given that I was just about to yell “Mayday!” 

I still felt that we were all facing certain death, but I just couldn’t come up with the terror that should have accompanied the situation.

“And then, before I could start broadcasting, I looked one more time at the instruments and was surprised to see that miraculously and against all possibilities, God had turned the plane around to the correct heading!  A few minutes later, I flew through a small hole in the clouds as planned, and went on to our destination without a hitch.”

I’m not sure yet if this story will go into the book, since it’s not technically about someone in their last moments before death, even though Bill and everyone else on the plane were convinced that they were on their way to Glory!

But it does testify to the peace we often feel that can only come from God, knowing without a doubt that He is right there with you. 

Hoping you have an uneventful week, and maybe meet some new friends who can share with you how great a God we serve.

Marsha