10 Feb My Favourite Stories #6
As a spectator I have some serious problems with the way God does things sometimes. I stand on the sidelines of history and I see things that frankly cause me to scratch my head. I see events in the lives of others and even in my own life and I am left with the incessant and lingering “why?”
I once read about 30 biographies of monumental pioneers of the Christian mission movement. By the time I finished I had some serious questions for God. For example, have you ever heard of Thomas Knibb? Probably not! That is because he died 3 months after arriving on the Island of Jamaica! So why, when it was his ‘passion’ for the spread of the Gospel that had led him there!? His brother back in England was so moved by his death that he went and took his place. He repeatedly buried his children almost as soon as they were born, although one son lived to be 12. As I read this I am saying “come on God this is not fair, give the gospel a chance, where are the miracles, these guys are in it heart and soul, why did you let this happen?” He went on to end slavery on that Island and establish Christianity, but at what a price!
Try this one. In 1818 David Jones and Thomas Bevan with their wives and infant children were the first missionaries to the Island of Madagascar. When they arrived, David was 23. Within 12 months Thomas, his wife and child and David’s wife and their infant child had all died. A combination of Malaria and poisoning by the housekeeper was suspected. So why would David Jones, the only one in the entire world who cared, stay in Madagascar? I imagined him standing by the gravesides of all his companions and I wondered what he was thinking as one by one he buried all those who had come with him to this island? What was he thinking about God? What was he saying to God through his unimaginable grief and loneliness? Did he question God’s wisdom and His Sovereignty? What possible purpose could God have for his solitude and suffering? Those that achieve great things for God often seem to do so through great suffering. Others eventually joined him, and David Jones went on to end slavery in Madagascar as well as establishing hospitals, schools and the first Christian churches! He died at the age of 42 from malaria after 19 years. What have I achieved in the last 20 years?
Another example. Francis Xavier went to Japan in the sixteenth century and within one generation of his arrival Christianity had flourished to about 300,000. Then in the seventeenth century the Shoguns decided to rid Japan of the “Foreign Devils”. So brutal was their extermination, that Christianity virtually disappeared. Now, I was weaned into Christianity on the words of Tertullian that says, “the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church” – but not here!! Why not in Japan? Why did God allow this annihilation of Christianity from which the church has never recovered in Japan?
So goes the trend if I had the time to recount the lives of other great religious pioneers and innovators. Even in our own day people have been beaten, imprisoned, vilified, and assassinated. The story is repeated over and over. A strong commitment to God appears to bring opposition, beating, imprisonment, great suffering, grief, loneliness, disease, loss of loved ones and premature death! Is it good to be a Christian? I have been in churches patrolled by banana spined dingoes that like to hunt ministers, (usually in packs of 3 or 4,) and I have asked God why He does not act more in favour of the Gospel and its propagation!
After reading those 30 biographies of great religious pioneers and innovators I had questions, but I already knew that when Job asked God Questions, God only answered his questions with more questions. I soon realized that I was Paddling my canoe on the edge of the deep & dark mystery of God’s sovereignty. I had for a moment peered into the infinite mist where words and reason fail. I was led to this subject by the reading of these biographies, but I was left with more questions than when I began.
I have many great volumes in my library about the sovereignty of God. But we need a simple answer that will affect and fuel our faith. As I went to the edge of this mystery and peered beyond, I heard the whisper of eternity and this is what it said.
From the dawning to the sunset of this world’s history God is silently, patiently working out His will. A commitment to God is not a recipe for prosperity, the evidence of great lives shows it often brings incredible hardships and hassles with institutional religion. The answer to the questions on the sovereignty of God is simple and concise. God has the right to do whatever He likes, and I lack the understanding and perspective to know why. History is the tide of the almighty. Throughout its ebb and flow it has a destiny, a consummation, a curtain call. I do not understand it all, but I trust. He is God and He can do whatever He likes, and I trust him with the outcome.
There is not much in this world that I really understand. When it comes to God, we have insights into His character through the glimpses of grace and examples of the severity of his justice from the Old Testament. As we see Him interacting with a rebellious planet, we see the motive of His salvation. I comprehend, through the death of Jesus, that God loves me passionately and that He wants me to spend eternity with Him. We have a prophetic panorama of this world’s history that dimly outlines its destiny. But when it comes to all else, we are like an ant in the kitchen. We live our lives in the obscurity of the valley between the snow-capped mountain peaks of two eternities.
In the end we are all but the slaves of life, and we drag our shackles with us from day to day while life, like water, runs through our fingers. We are like an ant in the kitchen preoccupied with a search for the morsel and totally unaware of the surrounding architecture and technology. Because we are so small, we cannot understand more than a speck of His ways (the kitchen). This is because we lack the perspective to see the “kitchen” as God sees it. We are merely cosmic Robinson Caruso’s with amnesia, shipwrecked but standing on the sands before an infinite ocean asking questions like who am I, where did I come from and how did I get here? God is God and as the sovereign ruler of the universe He can do whatever he likes, and I will put my faith in the outcome.
Evelyn Ebens
Posted at 14:54h, 21 AprilPerhaps God thought these missionaries were better not exposed to some of these places?
I watched the Baptist Carey movie, and they portrayed his 1st wife as not wanting to be there at all.
You hear wonderful stories of deliverance, but a nurse from Sydney San was speared in the back.
Ross Chadwick
Posted at 21:43h, 25 AprilThanks for your thoughts Evelyn. Ross