Neil Verwey Letter 2

7 July 2013 (letter #2)

Dear Phyllis,

As I mentioned in letter #1 recently I have written several letters to my friend Neil Verwey who is waist deep wading out in the River on his way to heaven at the moment. This week I want to share with you some of what I wrote to Neil Verwey. Rather than putting this together in one long letter I have decided to send out two separate letters. This is letter #2.

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1 Jul 2013

Dear Neil,

I believe it was around 1967 that JB Friends was in Karuizawa as the conference speaker. One night he told, from the pulpit, a story, and quoted a poem, that made such a profound impression on me that I never forgot it. The story goes:

Around the turn of early part of the 1900s a young missionary with the JEB was going out to preach one day. As he was walking along he noticed in a open house a man lying on a mat with a book that looked like a Bible. Bibles were so rare in those days that the man stopped to inquire what it was. Indeed it was a Bible. And he met a most unusual believer. This man was dying of TB but somehow had fallen heir to a Bible. He had never met a Christian in his life, but simply by reading the Word he had been saved and led into the deeper life. Before they parted the dying man said to the missionary, “I have written a poem. If you would be interested I would like to give you a copy.” Indeed it was an amazing poem which was later translated by Barkley Buxton. The poem goes as follows:

With Him, with Him upon the Tree'

Ah this, yes this is rest at last.

Here is the souls felicity

Here is the crown of victory

Here is all sorrow past.

With Him with Him Upon the Tree

Here all my pain and grief have died

I look in vain for misery

For joy is all that I can see

With Jesus crucified.

Strong pain hath held me in its sway

For six long weary, weary, years

And yet my heart is always gay

My lips are singing everyday

I have no time for tears

No tears and yet the more His grace

Doeth this my joyful heart ore'flow

The more 'tis torn by fierce distress

The while I see a wooing grace

Rush to it form of woe.

I have never heard such prose that expresses the Christian life. The contradiction of it; and yet the reality of it; that is the Christian life.

No tears and yet the more His grace

Doeth this my joyful heart ore'flow

The more tis torn by fierce distress

The while I see a wooing grace

Rush to its form of woe.

This is the Christian life.

Oh Neil, how amazing! I can scarcely imagine the grace of God to mold such a man in the early 1900s in Japan. The miracle of this poem! The miracle that it was translated by Barkley Buxton. How amazing that 50 years later JB Friends could quote that from a pulpit in Karuizawa, and then another 50 years latter I could send it to you from Thailand. Oh what will heaven be like? I can't wait to see that brother and tell him the enormous impact his ministry has had for so many years. He never got off his mat lying there dying in that dusty village in Japan, and yet his testimony has blessed hundreds around the world for many years.

Did you know Ted and Phyllis Brannen? Phyllis was an artist. I remember some Bible story kamishibai (picture cards) that she drew in 1959 in Tokyo. In 1997 she showed me a picture she saw in a magazine of a little boy in Bosnia holding a picture of that kamishibai she drew. But the shocker of all shockers; I was staying with some Karen minority people in a small village in northwest Thailand on the Burma border. The Christian lady there was using the same kamishibai to teach those little children about Jesus that Phyllis drew in Tokyo in 1959. I was stunned that Phyllis' art work had penetrated a remote corner of Thailand to reach refuge children from Burma. I couldn't believe it! I asked the Karen sister where she got that kamishibai and she told me that someone from Australia had sent it to her. I wonder how much your life has blessed thousands in every corner of this globe. You certainly have blessed this poor man.

Joyfully,

bill