This, the Love of Christ

Friday I found out that Steve Saint had been injured and paralyzed in an accident  as he was testing new equipment to be used in jungle outreach (he invented the flying car).  Our 12 year old daughter is just finishing the book he wrote, End of the Spear.

 

This came just hours after I found out that a young couple ministering in mission aviation in Zambia, parents to two little girls, have died this summer as he took her up for her first flight there with him.  He had gotten some of his education at a mission aviation training facility at which our son has also received preliminary aviation training and logged some flying hours.

God’s ways are so infinitely higher than our ways and that ought to shock-wave our hearts into peace rather than the natural human response of contemplating that these people could have done so much for Him.  In Zambia, this very young couple had already had such an impact that the president of the country proclaimed a national day of mourning at their death.  Speaking as a finite human, I wonder how much could have been accomplished for God’s glory in a few decades more.  But God knows how to protect and proclaim His own glory, and His plans for His people are not confounded by these twists in their stories, but rather commenced.

Last night we finished the book Into the Glory recommended to us by Cameron Townsend’s daughter.  Highly recommended if you can track it down. It ended with the story of seven lively, exceptionally gifted kingdom builders getting on a plane in New Guinea to fly to their respective homes and places of ministry, some back to young families.  Seven minutes later the plane caught fire and they went instead to their eternal home.

Excerpts from the moments of those days are recorded in the book and I found priceless (please, pardon the length--maybe take two days to read this lengthy post?  I just couldn't leave anything out nor chop it in two):

The man who had received the news and now must tell this to an auditorium packed with a worship gathering of their friends and family, walked the distance to the building: “Over and over a verse of Scripture kept running through his mind…”And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose”.   (Romans 8:28)

The wreck, still burning some few miles away, was announced, and the speaker stepped forward. “It was a moment of tender love, divine sensitivity.  'For thy sake we are killed all the day long.'  It was the words of Romans 8.  'We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.  However, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loves us…'”

“There was peace at Ukarumpa that night.  Comfort.  The Holy Spirit was there.  Grief?  Yes, but there was an overriding impression, almost an aura, that this was not a mistake.  Somehow, Some way, this was a  part of God’s great purpose.

Graham Pulkingham, the speaker, had prepared these words for that night:

“God is not glorified because we go off and do something for Him.  He is glorified when we give our bodies to be the habitation of His Holy Spirit…

“The world will tolerate you coming out here to do something they don’t understand; as long as you can produce something that is useful to the rest of mankind the world will put up with your bizarre behavior.  But if you told the world you had come out simply to be the living demonstration of Jesus Christ together, the world would turn upon you and rend you—for in their eyes that is a foolish thing to do.”

“He closed his message talking about that one extra quality which set apart as a special people the seven who died.  It was not their technical ability, nor even their dedication unto death.  It was love.

“If I see a hungry person and offer him a seed, it does not give him much nourishment.  But if I give him an apple, he has not only the seed, but the apple to eat.  So as you carry the seed of the Spirit into the world, make sure you have it encased in the fruit of the Spirit – which is love.  Then men will find nourishment as well as life.”

After the funeral, this in conversation:

“For years JAARS has lived with the motto: 'We do our best and the Lord does the rest.’  From a human standpoint, an error was made that caused people to die.  The Lord has laid down natural laws for us to live by.  If these laws are broken, we suffer.  But deep inside, I also know that in spite of our errors, in spite of our best-laid plans, God’s final purposes were always achieved.  All I can say is, those who died were chosen.”  He handed me  scrap of paper. "Read this when you have a chance”, he said.  Perhaps this will give you some insight into what I am talking about.”  My plane was ready to go.  I slipped the paper into my shirt pocket…”

"Late that afternoon in Port Moresby, standing at the edge of the Coral Sea, the rugged mountains and dense jungle behind me, I looked out over the water toward Australia.  The ocean was leaden, barely reflecting the heavy mottled overcast.  Brittle shards of sunlight began to burst through the swollen bellies of clouds, storm-tattered remnants driven west by the monsoon winds.  Bands of striated sunlight stalked like brassy shafts, illuminating the olive-tinted water, fracturing it like bits of broken green-glass bottles, then tarnishing it in deep gold.  I reached in my pocket ad unfolded the paper…it was a sheet out of Darlene Bee’s notebook [written by this young, beautiful, talented Bible translator days before her death in the crash]:

 

“Perhaps the moment after ecstasy;

After feeling the full, fierce force of life;

After knowing love, and while love is still warm…

Perhaps that is the time for dying;

Before everything and one has turned sour;

Before life is a burden,

Before the thrill of waking to a new day is gone;

Before we long for death…

To die while bursting with life,

Brimming with vitality,

Longing to live…

Perhaps this is the time to die—and live."

"So they died.  And so they live.

"Sixteen years before, five men had given their lives in the jungles of Ecuador that their killers might come to know God through Jesus Christ.  That was a true sacrifice—the innocent dying for the guilty.

“It was the testimony of the widow of one of these men, Marj Saint, that inspired Doug Hunt [the pilot in the crash] to lay down his nets and follow the Master as a jungle pilot—loving not his life unto death.  That, too, was true sacrifice.  Presenting his body totally to the Lord...

“Oh, God, and shall my heart be cold when men go out to die for Thee?” 

Today, Nate and Marj Saint’s son, Steve, lies paralyzed in a hospital bed.  On his Facebook page you can watch him speak with awe of the sacrifice of our Christ, the pain, his lacerated head bound round with stitches where the blade sliced through:

“Not one time have I wondered, or asked God why, this happened.”

“I think God is teaching me that He writes His best stories, from the hardest starts, from the hardest beginnings...”

He remembers an interview a news person had with Roger Youderian’s wife, in which he asks her to tell him (after losing her husband, one of the five men slain by the Aucas), when she asked God why, then what did God say to her?  She answered him: “I guess it just never occurred to me to ask God why.” 

And Steve recounts today: “ And I thought, how in the world do you get to that point in life  where you don’t even ask God why,  when your whole life turns upside down?  and now look –it’s happened to me.”

You can also see Steve talk over the internet with Mincaya, one of the Auca men who speared his father and the four others to death on that sandbar, and who now has been serving the Lord as one of His children for many years.  Steve says to him,

“In all the world, there are no people that I love more than I love you. I love your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren.  I love you…”

“The last night I was with Mincaya, I sat and watched him sleep, and I realized, this is one of my dearest friends in all the world.”

This, the Love of Christ.  We, His people.

Our son and his buddy at mission aviation flying camp last summer