My first visit to Nepal

When I hear the name Nepal there is a certain feeling that begins deep inside of me.  Explain it?  No way!  No words.  I remember my first visit to this wonderfully strange land more than 10 years ago.  I had flown from Manila to Bangkok for an overnight.  Boarded a Thai flight the next day on to Katmandu, Nepal.  I sat in my seat captured by a strange feeling.  As a child of God I always knew that I was to reflect the light of our Lord and I was to be a part of His light.  As my old Thai plane banked to land in this strange land I felt a sense of light flying into darkness.

I knew from my studies that Nepal was a Hindu country.  That told me that there would be thousands of different gods that had found a place to reside.  Gods that were the gods of darkness.  I felt a certain weakness that was strange.  My emotions were responding to the days ahead.

The arrival was an experience.  Not frightening.  No rudeness.  Just people all confused except for those who were suppose to be directing travel.  I have never experienced so many different voices barking out different orders and contradicting each other with ease.  I am not sure how I got out of the airport but suddenly I found myself confronted with scores of people who wanted to help me.  Carry your bags sir?  My taxi is this way.  My hotel is near.  Bottle of water sir?

With the gracious hand of the Lord upon me I found myself in a taxi. At least it was suppose to be a taxi.  I closed my door three times.  No air conditioning, sir.  Off we went in a car made from tin cans and spare motorcycle parts.  We drove at a speed that was un-nerving.  We swerved around "holy cows" that rambled freely.  Buses, trucks, bicycles, people walking, animals, beggars, WHO, UNESF, UN, diplomaic cars all in range of my vision.  The problem?  They all wanted to be in the same spot at the same time.

I do not know what kind of miracle got me to the right hotel but there it was.  Right in front of me.  Amazing.  I looked at the driver and he just grinned.  I gave him some rupees.  I don't know how many.  I just needed to get out of this danger zone and into this wonderful hotel.

I walked into a beautiful hotel lobby.  Not large but peaceful, orderly, with a young man bowing before me with a wonderful fruit drink.  What fruit?  Who knows.  Everyone was kind, helpful, gracious and there were fresh flowers that scented the air and I thought, "I  have just passed through hell and I am now in heaven."

That is how I got there.  The next few days were going to be my introduction to what I would find to be a wonderful country with gracious people and so much to see.  The next few days are for another time.  Just let it be known that Nepal is worth the visit.  You are never very far from the towering beautiful Himalayan Mountains.  They have a mystifying drawing spirit about them.  You simply want to go invited by the promise of the land of Shangri La. I have been going to that wonderful land for ten years.  I will return next month.

What's in a great cause?

We are a cause oriented society.  It is the "in thing" to be a part of some great cause.  There are scores of them to choose from.  Green is a great one.  The goal is to save the world from ourselves - to encourage our use of all forms of natural products.  If you like things of the sea there are several causes you might consider.  Whales need to be saved.  Seals are adorable and need to be saved.  Birds?  There are always some flying creatures that need our rescuing efforts.

Human rights advocates are big.  These are always good causes.  The list of human rights is endless.  There is always a minority group that is being mistreated.  As I looked at this interesting cause I discovered that almost everyone is in a minority group.  You really need to find out which one you belong to.

People are very serious about their causes.  They give their money.  They march in the streets.  They  chain themselves to some object and wait for someone to cut them free.  There are some really serious people who go on hunger strikes for days.  Occasionally, you hear of someone setting themselves on fire.

There is a driving force behind this cause phenomenon.  It makes a person feel good even if nothing changes.  They wear various symbols on the clothes or attach bumper stickers that read "Blow you horn if..." to their cars.

Here is a thought about the reasons behind the cause movements.  Could it be that there is a spiritual vacuum deep within a person that drives their involvement?  Every one has a spiritual need.  It may be hard to identify it but it is there.  Most people would probably never admit that a spiritual vacuum exists in their souls.

God has created us with needs.  The Bible tells us that we as His creations are a trinity in our very make up.  We are body, soul and spirit.  I like to think in some way our needs can be broken down into these three categories.  We have emotional needs.  Our physical body has needs.  Our spiritual needs  are deeper and maybe harder to identify but nevertheless they are there.

Our emotional needs usually find expression in relationships.  A good relationship can take us into  realms of delight.  Our physical needs can be met in a dozen different activities.  Our spiritual needs?  These maybe a little more difficult to assuage.  They are strong.  They may be be the strongest of needs.  However, identifying or even recognizing we have that need is at times very hard.

It was St. Augustine who said, "Thou hast made us for Thyself.  And our souls are restless until they find rest in Thee."  Of course, the regular cause seeker would not consider this concept because it has to do with religion and the whole God thing.  They need something more tangible.  Something they can do themselves.  Some good that they can find fulfillment in by doing it themselves.

So off man goes in search of his cause.  He ignores any inner plea that might come from deep within himself that his need may be spiritual.  That's too simplistic.  There must be something out there that is bigger and better.

I often imagine our Lord sighing as He watches us madly dash around the world trying to keep a tree alive or a fish from dying.  "This is my cause." we think,  "This is why I live."

The good part of all this madness is, God is patient.  He lets us run our course.  He is never angry when we run out of causes and somehow realize it was really Him that we needed all the time.  He waits and embraces us in love when we come to Him.  That's Who He is.

Ways I travel.

I had gone to the interior parts of the island of Mindoro for ministry.  I had a great time with the people of a very isolated village.  When it came time to leave I was told that someone would come for me at 3:30 AM.  I was waiting as an ox cart with a tired old ox pulled up to the thatch covered hut I had been sleeping in.

Off we went at a walking pace for three hours.  Coming to a small and very quiet fishing village.  I climbed out of the cart and onto a bangka.  A bangka?  That is our hand made fishing canoes.  We sit very low in the water and slowly moved up the coast of the island never very far from land.  Dolphins joined us from time to time for a four hour very pleasant ride.  As I watched the dolphins play I leaned over maybe to far and my watch disappeared into the sea.

We soon came to a dirt runway where I was to take my third form of transportation back to Manila. However, the manager said the plane had not been there for three days and he didn't know when it was coming.  There were five or six of us that decided to travel an hour or so to another village where we might get a boat across the straits to the island of Luzon.

Off we went on my fourth form of transport.  This was a jeepney that had long seen its last days but was defying time and moving on.  We rode through the dusty roads to the village.  Sorry, we were told.  No boat today.  However, not far from here was another village and we might get a boat to take us to Luzon.

By the time we reached the last of the villages it was getting late.  However, there was a boatman who agreed to take us for a price.  Our group had grown to about 15.  We paid and began to board another form of transport.  The 15 of us and a couple of boatmen was way to many for this bangka.  The more people who got in the lower in the water we sank.

It was dark by now.  There was no running lights on our bangka and the engine didn't sound to good.  It was an old diesel engine that threaten to quit every few minute.  No problem, I was told.

Off we went to cross from the island of Mindoro to Luzon.  For you who know,  running in between islands of the Pacific are what are called rivers in the sea.  It  is very swift moving waters that would carry any object out into the open Pacific never to be seen again.

A storm had developed and why not?  Everything was going in that direction.  As we moved out from the safety of the shores of Mindoro the waves begin to pick up and soon every wave would sweep totally over our bangka.  It was as dark as a dark night could get in the midst of a storm.  Not a light on the sea and not a star in the sky.

The engine begin to cough and threaten to give up.  We knew that if it did the current of the river in the sea would carry us out into the Pacific.  I later heard several stories of this happening and people were not heard of again.  This was great.

A man and I sit huddled in the front part of the bangka.  Fighting the waves to no avail.  I am not sure what he was doing but I was praying.  I mean really praying.  I came to a decision in the middle of this darkness that it was all over.  I wondered what Sue would tell the girls.  I wondered about a lot of things.  Strange had your thought are different at times like this.

As I prayed I looked off into the darkness of the storm and saw a pen head of a light.  I wasn't sure if it was real but focused in on it.  I told the Lord.  If He care anything about me at all please take me to that light wherever it may be.  As eternity came and went the light slowly became larger.  After some two hours we broke free of the river currents and entered the calmer waters of the shore of Luzon.  The light was the most precious light I had ever seen.  I wanted that light.

We soon floated into the village of this light and I somehow got off the bangka and staggered to a dilapidated but wonderful old bus.  The driver was a maniac and drove with strange abandonment.  Never mind.  I was getting close to Manila.  He dropped me at an intersection murmuring something about he was not going any further.  I managed to get a taxi.  It was about three in the morning.  He took me to my little home that had become the most precious sight of safety I had ever known.

My beautiful wife opened the gate in that early dark dawn morning and I stood and held her for a long, long time.  Twenty three hours ago I had gotten on the ox cart.  Travel can be so interesting in this part of the world.  Thank God for little lights.

Why do the nations rage?

You will find this question ask by a king.  It is found in some of his writings in Psalm 2.  Though he ask the question several thousand years ago it is a question that many are asking today.  What is wrong with the nations of our world.  Everyone seems to be raging at each other.  Everyone seems to be angry.  One nation fights another.  While near to them other nations are fighting for entirely different reasons.  It seems to be circling the globe.  Why is there so much turmoil?  Why are the nations raging?

I find it amusing and at the same time confusing as I listen to the leaders of our world give their various answers as to what is going on in our world.  The politicians, the educators, the philosophers and various others who are suppose to know give conflicting reasons.   They also have their solutions as to how all of this can be brought to and end.  As you listen to them their solutions seem to have some credibility.  But the rage continues.

Let me take you back into history to a time when God's chosen people, the Israelites, made a decision that displeased God and brought immediate consequences to them.  The decision was so severe and the consequences so great that it is all still with us today.  They made a deliberate, thought out decision to reject a form of government that they had been ruled by since their beginning as a nation.  From their beginning they had a form of government called a theocracy.  That is a form of government that is religious in nature.  God was the head of the government.  He made the rules and the people followed.

For very selfish reasons the Israelites decided to reject this form of government and decided they wanted an earthly, visible king like all other nations had.  And it was so.  They changed their form of government and since that time nations of the world have been changing their forms of government from time to time.

Some  nations became autocratic.  This is an absolute, dictatorial form.  Others went to the oligarchic form which is government by a few.  Still others chose aristocratic which is government by the nobility.  A very forceful type could be found in other nations called imperialistic which is a military, ruthless form of government.  Finally, in our world today we have the democratic form which is said by many to be the best though very confusing.

However, though you find all of these various forms in our world today we are still raging against one another.  No peace can be found in any of these forms of government.  The raging continues.

Is there a solution to all of this fighting?  If anyone of these forms of government were to dominant would we have peace?  I am afraid the answer is obvious.  Not one of these has ever brought any kind of lasting peace.  And we do not expect it to happen.

However, if we could go back and take a look at history and the form of government rejected by Israel could it bring into our world the peace that would end the raging?  The theocratic form of government would bring God back into our world of government.  The form where God makes the laws, man obeys and God supplies every need the man would have.  Peace would rule because it would come from the hearts of every person.  God would not just be found in the halls of some government structure but in the hearts of every man.

One day this form of government will return.  God will return to take back the world He created and He will once again be King.  It is definitely in our future.  Meanwhile, the nations will continue their raging and great turmoil will be found in each one.  But one day every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess that He is Lord.  He will be the Lord of Lords and the King of  Kings.  It is coming.

January the 2nd 1972- 40 years today.

This date holds a cherished meaning for Sue and I.  It was on this date that I took the hand of our five year daughter Beth and Sue took the hand of our three year Linnea and we boarded a very large United
Airline jet in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  It was raining as hard as any monsoon.  Our family and most of our home church were there to see us off. It was like a funeral.  We were headed for one of the smallest atolls in the Pacific Ocean called the Gilbert Islands.

Since this was before the information highway opened we knew almost nothing about where we were going.  There were 16 of the atolls and we were to live on Tarawa with about 16,000 people.  It was 14 miles long and no more than a mile wide.  We were to live in the village of Eita as the only foreign family.  We were funny looking people.

Our home was a small concrete building that had been built by a former missionary one block at a time. I soon learned how to make those blocks as I built class rooms and a hugh cistern. We had no electricity.  We got our water from the rain.  No telephones.  No one to call anyway.  The nearest hospital was 1,500 miles by water.  We got one plane a week and a ship every three months that would bring us fresh food.

We ate fish everyday.  Every few days one of the fishermen would catch a 300 pound turtle and give us a large portion.  Sue did miracles with what she had to cook.  She cooked on a one eye camping stove the first year.  It took us a year to get a new one from Japan.  The refrigerator was a demon possessed kerosene contraption.  We fought every two or three days.

The work was wonderful.  We had a school of 120 students.  Sue had a clinic for the villagers.  They came to her for everything.  She became very innovative.  I pastored the church on the compound, directed a small Bible Institute and supervised 20 churches on the other atolls.

I am not sure what we did for the people there but we learned so much.  We learned much about our Lord.  Because of what we did not have and were so isolated we learned one great lesson that became the rock of our missionary life.  YOU CAN TRUST GOD.  When there is no one, there is God.  When you are isolated He is there.  When deeply in need of a miracle He provides.

After three years we moved on to other places of service but the lessons we learned have stayed with us. You really can trust Him.  He will not fail you.  No matter where you serve He knows you are there.
   

There are things I would like to know about 2012

God has never detailed our future.  He speaks at times about certain things He feels we may need to know. But, on the whole, the future is God's.  Whether tomorrow or for a year, each day comes as God wills it. I hear the would be prophets talk eloquently about what has in some way been revealed to them.  I hear and sometimes I ponder on it.  But usually not for long.  Each day will some with its surprises.  Sometimes joyful things.  At other times sad, hurtful things.

As the year unfolds I pray that I will be able to respond as my Father would want me to.  He knows I have questions.  And if there is a need, He will reveal it.  But the Christian way is and always will be the way of faith.  Faith in a kind, loving Father who will always keep the future under His control.

What would I like to know?  Oh, I would like to know the time of His coming.  But, I know, that's on His calendar not mine.  I would like to know about my health.  There are things I would like to know about those I love.  Will the year be prosperous or will it be hard.  I do not know.

I remember Jesus ever so gently telling His followers, "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by His own authority."  (Acts 1:7)  I can live with that.  I can trust my Lord enough to live one day at a time.  Each day will arrive and God will be the One who has brought it.  I will try my best to enjoy each one He gives me.  I'll try to please Him as best I can.  I will strive for His smile of approval as each day closes.

God bless your tomorrows.  Live with the calm assurance that your Father will always be there for you.