The Big Tree and the Sabbath

Hosea 14:6

The Voice (VOICE)

⁶     She’ll send out shoots until her beauty is like the olive tree and her fragrance like the cedars of Lebanon.

Down the dirt road that ran in front of our house stood a magnificent lone pine tree. We always referred to it as the Big Tree. Its trunk was almost big enough to carve a tunnel for the road to go through. The branches spread out in every direction from a point about ten feet (3m) off the ground. Some reached more than 30 feet (10m) high. Others spread horizontally and every other angle to about the same length. The tree had hundreds of large round cones that were filled with hard-shelled nuts.

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When we were kids there was hardly a day when we didn’t run, walk, or ride our bikes down to the Big Tree. Initially it took us a fair amount of exploration, trial, and error to find out how to get up the first ten feet to where the great limbs branched out in all directions. But after several days of rediscovering the route to the branching, we could run up it in a flash, our bare feet gripping the rough bark to support us.

From the level of branching we had no trouble climbing to the farthest points on almost all the branches. We quickly learned that we had to beware of the branches when they became too thin to support our weight. For years we spent several hours a day climbing the various branches and traversing from one branch to another. There was an endless number of ways to get around the tree.

The branches became too thin to reach most of the cones directly, but the nuts they contained were too delicious not to try. Besides climbing we would stand on the ground and throw branches or stones at the cones. When we succeeded in knocking a cone down, we would gather around and break the cone open and pull out the nuts. Then we would each find a couple of rocks, place a nut on the bigger one, and hit it with the smaller one to break it open and feast on the nuts. Often we would hit the nut too hard, and it would either shoot off and get lost in the grass or be crushed into tiny fragments. At other times we would hit a supporting finger and get up and jump around and around, holding the injured finger and crying out in pain. Of course, many nuts were just hollow shells especially if the cones were rather old.

Mom taught us not to eat in between meals. The prohibition came with strong religious backing. However, she seemed to turn a blind eye when we ate the pine nuts we had worked so hard to obtain. Our parents also had very strict ideas about what activities were allowed on Sabbath and which weren’t. For some reason that I never understood, climbing trees was forbidden. We could take Sabbath hikes up the mountains and scale the naked cliffs and rocks, but climbing trees was taboo.

One day a missionary family from the Congo visited us. Their two kids, Tom and Lucy, were just our ages. We felt we had to show them our greatest treasure, the Big Tree. Of course, once we were at the tree, we couldn’t resist climbing and showing off our skills even though it was the Sabbath. I climbed way out on a branch that ran parallel to the ground and crossed the dirt road. As usual, when I got to the end of this branch, I took a good hold on the branch with both hands and flung myself off the end. The usual result was that I would hang there briefly, suspended above the earth, and then drop the few feet to the ground. This time the little branch I was holding onto snapped off, and my right hand hit the ground first trying to break my fall. It worked, but it also broke my arm and hurt worse than I could ever remember hurting before.

On the way to hospital Dad, who usually said very little, asked pensively, “Do you think this happened because it was Sabbath?” Mom, who usually expounded at length when I did something wrong, was silent. I did have four weeks to be constantly reminded of my indiscretion by a hot and itchy plaster cast.

Lord, sometimes You ask us to do or not do something, and we don’t understand why. Then You watch us pensively as we disregard Your request and reap the results that You were trying to shield us from. Thank You for Your forbearance, forgiveness, and rescue.

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[1] This is not the Big Tree, but the Big Tree was shaped something like this one. This tree grows near our home.

Airport Fog Expedites Journey

Isaiah 41:10

The Voice (VOICE)

¹⁰     So don’t be afraid. I am here, with you;
        don’t be dismayed, for I am your God.
    I will strengthen you, help you.
        I am here with My right hand to make right and to hold you up.

The landing lights of the Nairobi International Airport stretched straight off into the distance as our East African Airways flight banked into the final approach. I had gotten on the flight in Musoma, Tanzania, on the eastern shores of the mighty Lake Victoria. We had landed in Mwanza, Tanzania, on the south shore and then Entebbe, Uganda, on the west, and now we had flown to Nairobi where this flight ended, and the well over a hundred people on board were very anxious to disembark.

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I entertained several fears. It was December, and I was en route to Lusaka, Zambia, and a Christmas road trip with my parents to Rhodesia and South Africa. Due to their apartheid policies, these two countries were black listed in Tanzania. I wasn’t sure how much trouble we would have getting back into Tanzania where we were serving as missionaries. Sylvia and our four month old Esther had flown to Malawi earlier with the mission pilot. I had remained at Ikizu Secondary School in Tanzania to finish up the academic year.

More immediate misgivings were how I would get a room tonight in Nairobi and then get back to the airport early in the morning to catch the next flight from there to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and then on to Blantyre in Malawi and finally to Lusaka.

Suddenly the jet engines roared to full throttle and the plane started to climb. We were in a cloud for a little while and then the sky went black as we leveled off above the clouds.

After a quarter of an hour, I said to the man sitting next to me, “We’re flying round in circles.”

“How do you know?” he asked skeptically.

“I’ve seen Venus come by the window several times.”

“I know nothing about the stars.” He said flatly.

We flew for an hour more before the voice of the pilot cracked into life from the plane’s speakers, “We were lined up to land when the fog settled onto the runway. We’ll fly around for another half-hour and then, if the fog doesn’t lift, we’ll have to fly to Dar es Salaam before we run out of fuel.” Mild cursing came from many up and down the aisle.

Twenty-five minutes later my seat mate asked me, “Are we still flying around in circles?”

“Yes,” I responded. We were all very tired and lapsed into silence again. About a quarter of an hour later I added, “We’ve been flying in a south-east direction for about five minutes now.”

He cussed quietly. About ten minutes later the pilot announced that we were headed to Dar es Salaam. We would land in about an hour and a quarter. The airline would put us up in a hotel for the night, and they would try and arrange transport back to Nairobi in the morning. He apologized for any inconveniences this might cause us. Loud and fluent cussing went up and down the aisles.

As far as I know, I was the only one on that plane who was rejoicing. I would get a good night’s rest at the airline’s expense, and they had just solved my problem of how to get onto the Blantyre bound plane in the morning.

Lord God, thank You for using an inconvenient natural event to aid me in my quandary. Thank You for always being ready to help in large matters and in small.

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Reverence God--Honor the King

1 Peter 2:17

The Voice (VOICE)

Respect everyone. Love the community of believers. Reverence God. Honor your ruler.

On July 4, 2015, we attended church in Cottonwood, Arizona. For special music we heard a heart-felt rendition of “I’m Proud to Be an American,” a popular country and western patriotic song by Lee Greenwood. The musician followed it with a parallel version, “I’m Proud to Be a Christian,” that lifts up the life and death of Christ and the salvation He provides us. A church elder spoke about miracles in the church from Bible times to today. He sees the hand of God often working through the many triumphs of medical science and making them even more effective and successful. He bore witness to God’s part in his own health struggles and how he received two lungs in a transplant some six years ago. He credits the Lord for his good health today.

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After a brief lunch with our friends in the church we drove up through Navajo and Hopi land toward the quaint town of Cortez in the southwest corner of Colorado. The trip took us through several hundred miles of beautiful Arizona desert, enlivened by the monsoon rains. The sky was cloudy with great thunderstorms on all sides of us. At times we went through an edge of one or another of these spectacular storms. As we drove the last twenty miles, the setting sun shone below all of these storms and illuminated everything with a golden red light. We marveled in this monumental display of God’s fireworks that couldn’t be duplicated by any manmade fireworks display.

We pulled into a Wal-Mart parking lot where we planned to sleep that night. As we got out of our pickup, we were welcomed with powerful explosions. Independence Day celebrations were just starting across the street. We pulled down our tail gate, sat on it, and for the next half-hour turned our attention to a great series of fireworks. The monsoon clouds overhead dropped occasional giant raindrops on us while the festive explosions turned the flat bottoms of these clouds into reds, greens, whites, and blues. What an unforgettable day to blend our reverence to God with honor for our ruler!

Lord, we thank You for Your healing hand, Your magnificent power in providing for us, and the unprecedented freedom we have to live our faith.

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