7 June 2015
Dear Phyllis,
Today should be a banner day. We should be putting up the balloons, ribbons, and whistles, and get out the cake. Today is my birthday. It was 58 years ago today that I very haltingly said Yes to Jesus and did a 180 on the road of life. Nellie Pavloc of Russia use to say, “I didn't find the Lord; He found me. I was the one who was lost.” I can say Amen to that ten times. If Jesus ever had a poor, lost, wandering sheep, it was me. How He used a grocery string tied around my finger to gradually replace it with a cable tied around my heart is one of the great miracles recorded in the archives of heaven. If there should ever be someone standing on a podium giving a speech of appreciation and thankfulness to God, it is me. As we go through the directory of those whose names were recorded in the Lambs Book of Life from before the foundation of the earth, it is doubtful that there is anyone who stands more deeply in debt to the inexplicable mercy and grace of God than me. If Jesus were to go down the list of His greatest in debtors and see the one with the longest string of zeros after their debt there is little doubt that I would come out number one.
But rather than climb the podium to give an appropriate speech today, my feet are too sore even to put on shoes. Instead I feel more like calling for a chair to sit down. My feet are soar and my legs terribly weary today. Recently I saw a video clip on Fox News of a female soldier completing a 29 mile trek to graduate from Green Beret training. She was 100 feet from the finish line and collapsed. She was on the ground on her hands and knees with three or four of her friends and instructors standing beside her encouraging her to go on. With a Herculean effort she did manage to get to her feet and stagger forward only to stumble again. But at last she stayed on her feet for another 80 feet to collapsed just beyond the finish line. She was delirious but made it. When I saw that I thought, “yappari that is me, except I don't have her fight”.
I don't want to dishonor my Lord, but I am terrible short of breath today.
Physically things continue to improve. Last week I said I was at 15% recovery. Today I may be up to 25%. I can almost get a spoon to my mouth to eat with my right hand. I am starting to do the exercise of swinging my arm pendulum in about a 90 degree ark for 100 repetitions. The other day I walked to 7-11 to buy some bread that was almost a mile.
But activity – or the lack of it – is what is killing me. Apart from going to school to talk to the children for 30 minutes each morning, my life is little more than what it would be in a nursing home. Ninety five percent of every day is either spent in bed or in my chase lounge chair on my balcony. I do have my two hours of devotions every morning in the Word, prayer, and fellow-shipping with Samuel Rutherford (Letters of Samuel Rutherford). He spent nine years in silent exile where he was barred from his pulpit. He talked in ecstatic terms of how the Lord had taken him into His house of wine and feasting together with Jesus. He said he had learned more through his cross of silence that he ever had from years of preaching. He picturesquely wrote, “If the tinkling of the iron chains put on my arms and legs by Jesus would sing together a melodious song of praise to my Lord, then I am satisfied”. Amen! Oh, Lord, let it be so with me!
But the nine years of Rutherfords exile gave to the church one of the greatest classics that has ever been written. His letters have been a treasure for tens of thousands for 400 years. Had Rutherford been in the pulpit every Sunday during that time his enduring ministry would not have been 100th of what came out of his letters. When Jim Elliot, Nat Saint, and the other three brethren were speared to death by the Auca Indians in Ecuador in 1956 it looked like a colossal waste. But what has happened as a result of their historic sacrifice has rung a bell that has resonated world wide ever since. Had Jim Elliot lived to put in 50 years of productive missionary service he could not have accomplished a fraction of what his life produced by that river.
I am no Samuel Rutherford or Jim Elliot. (A good friend of mine was a classmate and close friend of Jim Elliot. He told me that Jim was just cut out of a different piece of fabric and very few people understood him.) My name isn't on the same page with those men. I am barely in the same book. I can clearly see the glory of God in the apparent waste of their lives. But I can't see anything positive in my being set aside.
It is no excessive wear but rust that is killing me. I have begged the Lord for a microphone to preach Christ, but what I got was to be relocated on the quiet left end of the bench with a clean uniform. How I long to get on the field to get back in the game. Lord, help me to make this the nosiest place in the stadium cheering for those who are playing. How I long for a ministry. A brother challenged me to get in a ministry of writing on Facebook. I did that for a month and then the brother took me off. So much for Facebook. The only window I have is writing. My heart burns with a tremendous amount of thoughts concerning Song of Solomon and started writing that down. But after sending out a few devotionals I discovered the market for that was zero. It seems that the Lord has put His thumb on my writing and closed that down also. I feel totally isolated.
Then I imagined myself on an island with Jesus that had no internet, mail service, and no one to speak to. What would I do? Adam didn't have internet or a large group to minister to. It was just He and God – later Eve. If this was my scenario then I would busy myself to make my island the most wonderful place on earth for Jesus. This has given me a little motivation for life. But being a social creature, I wish there was something more productive to do to serve the Lord. Of course there is prayer. Prayer from a deserted island can be as efficacious as if I was living in the center of Tokyo. But prayer emanates from a spirit of prayer. The vast bulk of my prayer are for things where I see no movement. I pray much for North Korea, the Uyghurs in west China, the Pastuns in Pakistan and Afghanistan. I pray for Pastor Hanook in Pakistan, my wife, my son David and others, but I suspect most of this are prayers stored in heaven to be poured out later (Rev. 8:3)
Tonikaku (anyway) here I am on my birthday eating my cake by myself. I'm not sure how much the Lord likes cake.
Still looking unto Jesus,
bill
No comments:
Post a Comment