Tuesday, 10 April 2007
-
God’s grace sometimes comes to us in unusual ways. In the last 7 months I’ve gone through two cars. The Buick station wagon had three brake failures last year on trips to Oaxaca. It had been purchased in 1998 for the Lord’s work in Mexico, and was a good servant. It deserves an obituary.
The Chevrolet
spent its last six months in Mexico, no doubt the hardest of its life. In its
last week here in Querétaro it served as partial transport for a group of young
people, but we had to park it and all pile into trucks for the last few miles
of trips into the villages we were visiting; the roads were just too rough.The next Thursday, as I was driving through Iowa to visit mom, the combination of Minnesota rust and Mexican bumps took their toll. The structural member which holds straight the rear wheel on the driver’s side broke; the wheel was free to caster in any old direction, not merely to follow along. For the next several moments, from 75 mph. to zero, the direction the car was pointed, the direction it was actually going, and the direction in which I was steering it became only very loosely related. It nearly left the freeway on the left side, crossed and went more than a car width off on the right, had the rear window smashed by something as it skidded back toward the road, and after a couple more wild careens came to rest partially off the right shoulder.
There are a lot of blessings to count. No one was hurt, and no other vehicles were involved. I had just passed two semis, and had come back to the right lane before passing a third. The car came to rest at the entrance ramp for Osceola, Iowa, and it was a short walk for help. I had canceled the Mexican vehicle permit (unlike the trip in February), so there were no obligations to the Mexican government. And, during the wild ride, the Lord had given perfect calm, clear and concentrated thinking, and assurance that all was in His hands, whatever the outcome.Four days later, after I’d completed the trip to mom’s by bus, Pastor Dennis called and said they had heard about the car, and some folks in the church would provide another one for service in Mexico. Three days later I was presented, by God’s grace, with a 1991 Isuzu Trooper, a car with high clearance and 4-wheel drive, quite suitable for out of the way places in Mexico. Dennis said he’d been told that because of the car’s history it probably wouldn’t have much resale value, “but it would be okay for someone who wants to drive it until the wheels come off.”
The car went into immediate service. Within minutes I left for south Texas. The next day I joined with a group from Christ Covenant Church in Warsaw, Indiana, and we crossed into Mexico for a week of Bible clubs in two
fishing villages, La Poza and La Media Luna. After that
week, I returned to Querétaro on Friday for an activity in the San Felipe area
here on Saturday.This is another example of how the body of Christ serves together, and how no one member can do without the others. There was no way I could have secured a vehicle, let alone such a suitable one, in time for what we had planned here in Mexico. But Christ, who is the head of the body, had other members in place, with a will to serve Him by providing a car. I just get to be the one who reaches from GBC into Mexico, in the name of Jesus Christ. But we’re all in this together.
In 2nd
Corinthians 10, the apostle Paul wrote about the foolishness of those who tried
to measure themselves by one another (implied: that Paul did not measure up to
them spiritually), then went on to show that the Corinthians could evaluate him
by the more objective measure that God had planned for him: that Paul had
actually come as far as Corinth first with the Gospel. And Paul’s objective was
“to preach the gospel even to the regions beyond you, and not to boast in what
has been accomplished in the sphere of another.” And that’s the goal of To
Every Tribe: to take the gospel where it hasn’t gone before.
God preserved my life when He could easily have taken me out. He has provided a car that can go beyond where I could ever go before. Maybe He has plans.
I can hardly wait.
-
recommend
- recs 0
-
share
-
email
- sent 0
Post a Comment