Mistakes

AUGUST 2, 2018

Dear Phyllis,

The story is told about a business man who was traveling across the US in a train sleeper car. He asked the porter to wake him up at 3:00 AM and told him, “I have a very important meeting tomorrow and I am a very heavy sleeper. I don't care what I say, please make sure that I get off this train at 3:00”. The next morning when he woke up it was daylight outside, and he realized he had missed his stop. He was furious, and tore into that porter with a vengeance. The porter said, “Boss, if you think you are mad you should seen the man I put off the train at 3:00”.

I can identify with that poor komatta (big problem) porter. There are times in life when we try to do our best only to realize what we thought was sugar that we put in our coffee was actually salt. I am back in Thailand but not reveling in the great success my trip was to Japan. If I was to rate myself for what I was able to do for Sam on fixing up his recently acquired house, I would have to put down a D. Due to a visa problem I have in Thailand, I had to restrict myself to only one month. Sam also has a retired carpenter who is a fine brother in his church helping him. When I first got there They had just torn out all the floor and several walls and were replacing the floor from ground up. Sam wanted me to make the kitchen, but with no floor I couldn't even measure how high to make the ceiling. The first week I got very little work accomplished. The house was an old Japanese house with interior walls made out of bamboo and mud. There was nothing flat to give me a surface to put in backing to hang dry wall on. In an American house, all the studs are in place, and you have a flat plane to work from, but in that house I had to cut strips various thickness and use all kinds of different size wood for shims to make flat walls. What would have been a two hour job on a western house took me two days to get to the same place. But the Lord did help and I was able to get at least a passing grade on the little work I did accomplish.

There was some critical work that I was concerned to get done before I left, and I only had one last day to do it in. Like most things in life, in carpentry, you have good days and bad days. There are times when everything turns out perfect. You make cuts at random and it fits perfect. And then there are days when nothing goes right. It is like the carpenter who complained, “I have cut this crazy board off three times, and it is still too short.”. There are times when you are as careful as possible to make a frame exactly right, only to realize that you have made it backwards. You have to tear it apart and make it all over again. Then you discover that you were right the first time and have to remake it back the way it was. Have you ever had a day like that? Probably not. But that was literally the way things went the last day I was on the job. All I could do was wipe the tears from my eyes and hope someone could cleanup the mess I left. That is not a real good note to leave on. I am so ashamed of myself I would like to give back the money Sam paid for my plane ticket.

I was in Japan for one month and no one ever asked me to speak in a church one time. While there I went to the church John Cathcart had started 30 years ago. Sam's eldest son, Caleb, is the pastor there now, and is doing extremely well. The church is the healthiest I have ever seen it. I would have loved to peach but I did notice each Sunday the Lord would give me an excellent time speaking with one person. I thought if I can have input in one persons life that is better than speaking to a room full of people where nobody gets anything from it.

The brightest spot of my stay in Japan was Masayo Nakahara. Twenty five years ago I used to have a home meeting in her home. Masayo was a sweet little 14–15 year old girl then who had a real love for Jesus. Then college took its toll and she got jolly well backslid. But Jesus has done a wonderful job in restoring Masayo back to Himself, and Masayo is as on fire for the Lord as you can get. My time spent with Masayo and her husband would have justified the trip. The morning I left Japan Masayo got up at 5:00 AM to come to the airport to see me off. The deep love Masayo has for the Lord and for me is a showpiece of the reality of the life of Christ in a human heart.

The flight home on Wednesday was good and Pammy was waiting for me at the Chiang Mai airport. Things have gone extremely well for her in my absence. She has gotten in real tight with a Korean missionary, Dr. Kim, and was very busy showing three groups of Christians from Korea around Chiang Mai. The Lord has placed her right at the top of that church, and she is functioning the best I have seen since we have been married. These past few days since being home have been the best ever. We are on the same page like never before. We have had some excellent talks and I am very impressed with her spiritual discernment. I can truly thank the Lord for giving me such an outstanding partner. She is the brightest jewel in the box.

It was great to get back to the kindergarten to see Sangha and the children. Just to have a room full of children scream, “Uncle Bill!”, and come running to see you is one of the greatest rewards of life. Sangha is still the best gift Jesus has given me for fruit in Thailand. Some missionaries have spent a lifetime in service for the Lord and only to see one or two souls brought to Christ. Although the bottom of my basket looks awfully bare with so little fruit in it, yet I do thank the Lord for the privilege of seeing a jewel like Sangha enjoying the reality of Christ.

I was reading the book of Lamentations for devotions a few days ago. This has never been a very close book to me and at times I have wondered at the pronouns in it. Jeremiah is one of the most unusual prophets in the Bible as his ministry was at the lowest time in Israel history. For 30 years Jeremiah warned of coming judgment and was the object of a great deal of persecution from his country men. When the end finally came, and all he had warned had come to pass, he could have easily said, “You had it coming, you dirty rascals. I warned you.” Jeremiah said, “The Lord has done that which He had devised; He has fulfilled His Word” (Lam. 2:17). Fifty percent of the Covenant is negative. The Lord promised blessing if Israel kept their part of the deal and promised disaster if they didn't. It is good to see God keep His promise even if it is judgment. The greatest hallelujah word in the Bible is Armageddon. Armageddon is the ultimate disaster word in human lexicon, but it is the greatest hallelujah day in heaven. Revelation 14 & 15 are when heaven gets on their feet shouting and praising God. That is when Jesus gets on His horse to come back to clean out the anti-Christ and set up His Kingdom. Armageddon is a hallelujah day for heaven, and the fall of Jerusalem could have been some satisfaction for Jeremiah to see God's Word of judgment fulfilled. But in chapter 4 he uses the first person pronoun about how the wrath of God was poured out on him personally. For many years the use of the first person pronoun has confused me. The Lord showed me, the explanation for this was because of Jeremiah's identification with his people. Then the Lord showed me something that was overwhelming. When I read about the horrible suffering when the wrath of God was poured out, the Holy Spirit showed me this was the Words of Jesus. The first person pronoun about the wrath of God being pureed out on ME is actually the Words of Christ. The Me of Lamentation is Jesus. At this I burst into tears. This is a mystery. The Lord has thrown a cover over what happened to Jesus when He stood in the gap to bear the sin of the world and the wrath of God was poured out on His Son. No one has ever seen the 1000^th part of what happened on the Cross, and I doubt that anyone ever will. I told the Father, “Please Lord, I don't want to see it. I can't take it.” Just to hear a small portion of it is all I can bear. What can we say? I don't know. ….

See you next week. Arigato gozaimasu, bill