Looking Back

The date was December 20, 1952. Add up the numbers and you will find that it will be 56 years ago this coming December 20.
Those 56 years represent:
4 years of graduate school
13 years with ABWE
6 years of hotel management
Uncounted messages given to small (20 or so) people to 6000
20 years of Bible chapels
20 years of college classes taught
Many seminars held
22 ½ years of college administration
15 years of missionary radio broadcasts
Three books written and published
Four children born, three married, ten grandchildren, one great grandchild
17 foreign countries visited
49 States visited
Over 500 chapel messages
4-500 faculty meetings
Countless interviews about greatly varied subjects
Whew! Compiling such a list makes me tired. The years have been great. God has been good.(That should come as no surprise). Our children and grandchildren have made us proud. Those with whom we have worked have been an inspiration to us. We have moved from being the novices in the family business to becoming the patriarchs of the family.
You come to this place in life when there is much less time left than has passed and you have to say, “Was it worth it?” The answer is a resounding “Yes!”
Letters come to us all the time telling of how the Lord has dealt with those writing. They are not all what you would call success stories, but they tell of salvation, needs met, God’s leading, and God’s faithfulness. One such letter came just a few days ago and told of using a method of helping the children with memory verses. She learned it in a Bible Club during those first days of our marriage.
We think of a missionary in Germany who took Catherine into his study and showed her his flannelgraph materials and thanking her for teaching him how to reach children. We remember a missionary of 40 years who had at the end of a semester said that he was so thankful for the course in missions because he now could not go out under the board he was considering and having that realization applied to a much better board and had a fantastic record of reaching people, starting churches, and training people in three different countries. We think of school administrators, mission leaders, college administrators, and so many other faithful workers that our hearts swell up in thanksgiving for letting us be a part of the development of people who are being used by God to do His work.
It is easy to remember the three chapels Catherine would teach at Grace Christian School in the Philippines. Would you believe she had 800 Chinese children in each of those chapels. They wanted her to come every day, but we could only make it once a month, but think of it. She was able to teach the good news of the Gospel to over 2500 Chinese children on each of those days. It made going to airport, shopping, and caring for the finances of about sixty missionaries seem sort of insignificant, but it wasn’t. It was why we were there.
Today we are limited to what we can do from our apartment here in Pfafftown. That is all that the Lord asks of us. He wants us to do what we can. We could ask Him to give us bigger crowds and more exciting venues, but that is all up to Him. Big crowds and beautiful buildings don’t matter. Listening to that still small voice and doing what it asks is all that we can do. Isn’t it great that He cares about us here in the quiet of Pfafftown? Our challenge to you is: “Are you doing what He wants you to do?” “Do you even know what He wants you to do?” “Do you even care if you hear from Him?” Lift your heart to heaven and ask Him, “Lord, what is it that you want from me at this time in my life?” I can guarantee you that if you ask Him, He will tell you.

A Modern day Monalisa

A number of years ago, a widow in our church contacted us and asked if she and her daughter could meet with us.
She came to the house here and told us that the reason she was here was that her daughter, Lisa, was going to be home alone during the summer and she was worried that Lisa would get into trouble. She said that our children appeared to be trouble free so that made her want Lisa to live in a home like that.
Lisa had been giving her mother some problems already and she knew that we would be able to know what to do when Lisa acted up. We told her that we did not know what to do because we were blessed with children who didn’t give us any trouble and we wouldn’t know what to do if they did. That answer did not satisfy and she was sure that we would know how to handle this girl when she acted up.
We had a family meeting and told our children about the request. We said that we did not want to do it if they were not willing or they felt that it would just ruin their summer. They were terrific and gave us some words on “pure religion” and its implications. So it was decided that we would take Lisa in for the summer. Of course we had told Lisa that she would have to live by the rules of our house which weren’t a great number but they were important. It included such things as no drugs, alcohol, smoking, etc. Lisa agreed and it was not long until she arrived at our house.
She was a pleasant visitor living with our family. I don’t know what problems she had before coming here, but we had virtually none for the whole summer.
We had planned a trip that would take us to Fort Lauderdale for some meetings and a visit to the island of Bimini in the Bahamas. Shortly before we left for Florida, Lisa came down with Mononucleosis. We were afraid that it would mean we could not make the trip. The doctor put her on medicine, and she seemed to be fine.
It was not long before I gave her the name Mono-Lisa. It just seemed the right thing to do. She really liked being called Mono-Lisa. I enjoyed calling her that.
While we were on the island of Bimini, we went swimming one day. We had taken the boat to a small island and were swimming around that. We did see a lot of things in the water that we did not see very often. Lisa and Martha and I were swimming together when we realized that we were being pulled by the current and as we tried to swim against it we were not making much headway. In fact, Lisa was wearing out completely and looked like she was about to go under. Someone had told us that we should go with the current and it would take us right around the island. I grabbed Lisa and the three of us did just that. The current did carry us around and we were able to make it to shore.
As we sat along the shore we were very happy to see that Lisa was doing fine. Even though the medicine was covering her illness, she still did not have full strength and we were very fortunate that something very bad did not happen to her that day. It alerted us to be very careful that she did not overdo for the rest of the trip.
That was many years ago and we don’t know what happened to Mono-Lisa or to her mother. We are thankful that we had her company for one summer and trust that our lives impacted her life in a favorable way.

News from the Appalachian Trail

A View From the Appalachian Trail

I reported that my grandson, Spencer, and his wife, Jenny, are in the process of walking the Appalachian Trail. They have not completed about two weeks of the walk and have covered about 1/3 of the State of Maine. They have covered about 100 miles and have about 2400 to go. Our grandson, Brian, who is a captain in the USAF is endeavoring to obtain some of the new type of rations that the military has available in order to give them something more satisfying than oatmeal for breakfast each day and trail mix for dinner.
All the family sits in amazement as we hear about the intense walk that they are undertaking. They have seen a variety of wild animals including one they did not see. They were awakened on a recent morning to hear something rummaging around outside of their tent. From the sound, they assumed that it was a moose, but they wisely stayed in the tent and did not test out their theory.
The walking is hard, but the scenery is beautiful. The trail through the mountains of Maine leads them past some lakes of great beauty. They are lakes that most of us do not see because we don’t undertake the difficult hike for ourselves. They don’t stop to fish or camp along the lakes, but they plod on so they can conclude their walk between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The beautiful lakes combine with the mountaintop views that they have as they walk along. As they gaze out on the spectacular vistas, sore knees and hungry stomachs fade into insignificance. Laying down the burdens on their backs at the end of the day must feel really great, but just think of the ability to close your eyes and go to sleep and the reward that all of this brings.
Life is a little like walking the long trail. There are difficult spots along the way and it may not bring pain to our knees, but the difficult places may bring pain to the heart. A broken relationship, a harsh word spoken, or a flare up of tempers may cripple our walk for the Lord. We can let the external detract from the eternal. We need to be able to lay down our heads and hearts at the end of the day and know that the walk was worth it.
A life of victory is what God intends for each of His children. He doesn’t want us to be defeated by the walk, but He wants us to grow as we walk. He has cool beautiful lakes to refresh our souls along the way. He has vistas beyond our imagination that He wants us to see as we grow in Him.
We don’t know if Spencer and Jenny are going to make it to the end of the trail they are on. There is no reason they need to do that because they are only doing the walk because they want to. If they only go half way, they don’t have to apologize to anyone. It is different with life. God expects His children to cross the finish line victorious. They are not just on a self imposed walk. They are under marching orders from God and He expects us to be victors in the Christian walk. We are very fortunate that we have resources for this walk that are not available along the Appalachian Trail. Jesus stands at the finish line ready to say to us, “Well done.” Because we have listened to His instructions, followed His leading, and allowed Him to carry our burdens, rest our souls, and strengthened our bodies through it.
Recently a man in Georgia saw what looked like a foreign object in the sky. He was sure it was a UFO, but it wasn’t. It proved to be the moon itself. He focused on that object and became obsessed with it. We need to be obsessed with the one who calls us from the sky and wants us to focus on Him for the walk that is before us. He is not a fancy of our imagination, but Jesus is the real thing. The writer of Hebrews says in chapter two concerning running that race:
1 Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
2 looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

We don’t know when we will cross that finish line. I know that I am much closer to it than at any other time in my almost 81 years, but the timing doesn’t matter. We may cross it close to our birth or close to our three score and ten. God wants us to be ready to cross it at any time and His Word promises that Jesus will be there whenever we do cross that line

Enjoy life’s vistas. Fill up on God’s portioned rations. Don’t lose sight of the goal where Jesus stands ready to welcome us to our eternal home. What will it be like in heaven? No one knows all the details. We only know that it will be wonderful, fulfilling, and joyful. What more could we ask for?

Hooray for the Fourth of July

Yesterday was the Fourth of July. We had a cookout at our house with only about half of the potential family members attending this annual amount. That meant that we were twelve in number. Other family members were as far away as Michigan, Virginia, Florida, and Maine. We missed the absent ones, but were thankful that we knew they would have been here if they were not someplace else.
The Fourth is a special time of the year for us as Americans. It is a time to remember how we came to be a nation in the beginning. We have never been a nation without fault, but we have always been a nation on the right track. People have paid a high price for us to have the blessing of freedom.
The flag is the symbol of that freedom. Catherine and I are the glad owners of a very special flag. It was given to us by our grandson, Brian, when he returned from his first tour of flights above the country of Iraq. It was very special when we opened this flag last Christmas and saw that Brian had bought the flag and took it with him so that it had actually flown over the nation of Iraq. That certainly made it very special.
We are in our eighties so it should be expected that we would cherish the heritage of our country, but think about what an encouragement it is to know that a captain in the Air Force would know what a special thing that flag would be. The only way that he could know that was for it to be just as special for him.
We should never take being an American for granted. Millions of people in this world have no comprehension of what real freedom is. Our forefathers put their lives on the line in order to establish this free nation. They may not all have agreed about just how it should work, but they all agreed on the subject of freedom. Men in the south fought for this freedom when they still held slaves. How could the compilers of the Constitution do that? How is it that the people of this free nation can see the inconsistency in that today when people lived with it back then?
We need to thank God for the gift of freedom. We look at the prosperity of our nation and think that we are a wealthy nation because we are free. Let us never presume on the goodness of God. He blesses those who follow in His ways and He even blesses those who don’t know Him. He makes the rain to fall on the good and bad. It is great to be able to celebrate freedom like we do. Enjoy it today. There are those who would take it away from us and that is sad. It means that they do not appreciate this great gift.
We cannot allow people to enslave us with power or thought. More people have been enslaved by ideas than those who have been conquered by armies. My freedom requires that every other person must be free so we can enjoy it together. The Fourth of July is a great reminder that we live in a great nation of people bound together by great ideals and great ideas.