The Lord Is Your Shade

 

[1]

Psalm 121:5-6 King James Version

⁵ The Lord is thy keeper:
               the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.
⁶ The sun shall not smite thee by day,
               nor the moon by night.

 

Our family moved to Solusi, Southern Rhodesia, in 1954 when I was 12 years old, and living in tropical Africa was a brand-new experience for me. When we arrived, well-meaning folks warned me, “You are red-headed, blue eyed, and pink skinned. You had better wear a hat all the time you are outside, or you’ll have a sunstroke for sure!” A stroke sounded pretty bad to me. My grandfather had died from a stroke just days before we moved, so I started wearing a hat often when I went outside.

The E. B. Jewels, second generation missionaries at Solusi, decided to retire in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, so they bought a bungalow on Khami Road west of Bulawayo near Solusi. Their son Laverne and I were good friends, and they invited me over to help whip the neglected yard into shape. We worked all morning in the tropical sun. I wore a hat as per instructions. By lunch time, I started throwing up, had a fever, and was feeling extremely exhausted. Mrs. Jewel was a nurse and suspected I had gotten a sunstroke. She rushed me off to the Bulawayo hospital, and they gave me an IV to combat my dehydration. I felt miserable but recovered readily enough.

In 1967 when Sylvia and I arrived at Ikizu in Tanzania, a degree or so off the equator, I knew that I had better wear a hat. My picture as I left the airplane shows me wearing one. I think that was the last time I wore a hat at Ikizu. For five years, I usually dressed in short pants, a T-shirt, and sandals locally made from an old car tire. I decided that the only time I had gotten a sunstroke was when I wore a hat. I figured out that the hat must have been the cause. I relied on the Lord’s promise that He would be my shade, and that while I was doing His business, He would protect me. He did.

Gracious God, thank You, for being our keeper and shielding us from catastrophes all around us.

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[1] https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Inspirational-Images/large/Psalms_121-5.jpg

Lively Stones in the Spiritual House

 

[1]

1 Peter 2:5 (King James Version)

 ⁵Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

 

Growing up in the South Africa of apartheid I attended a white school. The law insisted that I do so. I attended the Helderberg College Church. Our family always sat on the front row. This was ostensibly because my grandfather was hard of hearing, which he was. But we continued the practice even after he had died.

White students and white families filled the church. Because there was no church nearby that the blacks could attend, they were allowed to come to our church. But they had to sit in the very back row of the balcony. Up there they would not be noticed by guests coming to our church.

When I was twelve, my grandfather died. Our family moved from South Africa to Solusi, a black school in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Here all of the white missionaries sat in the front few rows of church. This was to set an example to the “poor benighted” blacks who filled the rest of the church. We wore suits and ties. Our shoes were polished. Our hair was neatly combed.

I knew that many of the missionaries really sat in the front so that they would not be contaminated by coming into contact with the blacks. They seemed afraid to be too closely associated with people who came to church barefoot because they owned no shoes. Afraid that their “Sabbath” dresses and suits might brush against the only dress or shirt a person owned, and in which they had walked maybe a mile or more so that they could go to church.

I was, of course, not immune to picking up on some of this superior attitude. As a child growing up in the home of a college teacher at Helderberg, I felt superior to the poor kids who were simply students living in a dormitory. We all felt superior to the blacks sitting in the back row of the balcony to whom no one deigned to speak. They were a real embarrassment to the church.

Once in a while I would express something that hinted at my feeling of superiority. My mother would call me aside, look me square in the eye, and say in tones of rebuke: “You didn’t make yourself white!” Often this would be followed by a pointed lecture about my real place in society. We were simply each one a stone that God was building into a His spiritual house.

In Rhodesia we didn’t have the strict apartheid laws. On a regular basis Mom would invite the older (black) people into our home for a feast. She made no bones about the fact that these women were her friends. Other missionary families, trying to preserve their thin veneer of superiority, frowned on this practice. Nor would any show their faces near our home during one of Mom’s feasts. The local people loved her. They regarded her as their friend, too.

After working in Africa for 40 years, my parents’ time came to return to America for rest and retirement. But Mom’s heart couldn’t take the impending separation from her friends. Six weeks before they were scheduled to leave, she had a heart attack. Now she is buried amongst her friends in Africa; one stone amongst the many in the spiritual house God is still building.

Help me remember, Lord, that in Your sight I could count as nothing, but You have given me the honor of being a stone in the spiritual house You are building.

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[1] https://www.standout-cabin-designs.com/small-stone-cottages.html

Lose It To Save It

[1]

Luke 9:23-24 Good News Translation

²³ And he said to them all, “If you want to come with me, you must forget yourself, take up your cross every day, and follow me. ²⁴ For if you want to save your own life, you will lose it, but if you lose your life for my sake, you will save it.

 

Mom and Dad, Esther and Fred, had no plans to go to the “mission field.” They said, “There are enough heathen in the United States that we shouldn’t be needed overseas.” Dad’s Uncle I. H. Evans had been a missionary in China for many years. By the middle 1930s, he had returned to the U.S. and was the president of the North American Division of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. Yet when the call came to my parents to go to China as missionaries, they accepted it. Before leaving they had to have medical check-ups, which they failed. They felt the Lord was indicating that He, too, wanted them to work in the U.S. Very shortly thereafter, however, they received a call to go to South Africa and were accepted on the same medical results with no problem.

In 1935, they sailed to Africa. They served in Africa for 40 years, and Mom died and is buried in the missionary graveyard at Solusi University in Zimbabwe. She died six weeks before their planned retirement back to the States. Dad came back unaccompanied, feeling very much alone. He visited a number of his single lady friends looking for another companion. Finally, he settled on Helen Merriam Diehm. He said to her, “Would you be willing to go to Africa with me for two years?”

“I take that as a marriage proposal!” She responded and agreed to go with him.

They settled at Lower Gwelo, a school in the center of Rhodesia that is now Lower Gweru Adventist High School, Zimbabwe. Dad became the treasurer of the school and Helen an English teacher. Helen was terrified. This was 1975 and the beginning of the civil war in that country. Reports came in daily of the deaths of people they knew. But they had agreed to go there for two years, and they stayed for two years. Other missionaries whom they knew were brutally murdered, but the Lord honored their commitment. At the end of two years, they returned to a comfortable retirement together in the U.S.

Thank You, Lord, for the promise that even if we lose our lives for Your sake, You will save them!

 

 

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[1] Fred and Helen in Africa, 1976

What Angers Christ

[i]

Mark 10:14 Good News Translation

¹⁴ When Jesus noticed this, he was angry and said to his disciples, “Let the children come to me, and do not stop them, because the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”

 

Jesus is seldom described as becoming angry. When He saw someone preventing seekers from seeing Him, as in this instance, His divine nature flashed forth through His human nature, and in pure love He stopped the preventing party.

On two other occasions, temple officials were desecrating the temple by profiting from peoples’ desire to worship the Lord as had been prescribed since the time of Moses. When Jesus walked in, He understood clearly that they diverted worshippers’ devotion to God by their cheating. These worshipers were no longer seen as seeking a spiritual blessing but were reduced to secular mercantile considerations. Not only were they robbed of their hard-earned possessions, they were also robbed of a love experience with the Almighty. Their much-anticipated joy was displaced by disgust and resentment.

Again, the divine nature of God in Christ flashed forth with irresistible force. The perpetrators fled in terror for their very lives. They felt a tiny hint of the forth coming judgement when they will no longer be able to flee.

In the first mentioned occasion, the disciples were trying to protect the Savior’s serious business of establishing the Kingdom of God from childish interruptions. In the second mentioned occasions, the clergy was attempting to maintain the sacred purity of temple sacrifices and thus prevent divine retribution as happened when someone brought an unacceptable offering—like Cain had (1 John 3:12), or like Nadab and Abihu who offered unholy fire in their censers (Leviticus 10:1). One is also led to think of Uzzah, who was struck dead when he tried to stabilize the Ark of the Covenant, that appeared about to fall (2 Samuel 6:6,7).

In our Liturgical Service at the La Sierra Church, we have been promoting the biblical principle of the equality of all people in the sight of God. In particular this refers to racial equality and gender equality. We have been discouraged at how slowly this principle of equality is accepted by our own generation. In a recent service where I was liturgist, the liturgy included the following song:

The cantor and people sing “Welcome Our Sister-Brother Creator[ii]” (to the tune of Hymn 44, “Morning Has Broken”)

 

Come, let us join our Sister Creator,
Birthing a new world more than we know.
With Her revealing all of our fullness
We create healing where’er we go.

 

Come, let us join or Brother Creator,
Bringing forth freedom for every race.
All of earth’s colors dancing together,
Celebrate beauty in every face.

 

Welcome our Sister-Brother Creator,
Into our spirits’ life-giving wombs.
Glad expectation grows from our labor
For new creation’s glorious blooms.

 

As I sang and listened to these words, my thoughts were deflected from the love and grace of Christ and his eternal sacrifice for my soul to the unfortunate conflict within the church over the ordination of women. Are we not as guilty as the priests who promoted the sanctity of offerings in Christ’s day or as Uzzah when he went to stabilize the Ark of God?

Lord, give us wisdom to know how to promote what is good without distracting ourselves from You.

 

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[i] https://zimfieldguide.com/matabeleland-south/cyrene-mission A mural from the Chapel at Cyrene Mission in Zimbabwe

[ii] Words by Jann Aldredge-Clanton (2009)

Pioneer African Educator

 

Ecclesiastes 3:11

GOD’S WORD Translation (GW)

¹¹ It is beautiful how God has done everything at the right time. He has put a sense of eternity in people’s minds. Yet, mortals still can’t grasp what God is doing from the beginning to the end of time.

C. Fred Clarke, my father, worked as a missionary educator in Africa for 42 years, starting in 1936. He loved Africa. He worked in South Africa for the first 18 of those years. He picked up enough Afrikaans so that he could communicate in it. This helped endear him to the people there. His sons were born in Africa. In 1974 he buried his first wife in Zimbabwe, just six weeks before they were to retire to the U.S.

He had pretty much a type A personality. Working in Africa north of the Limpopo helped him rein in his impatience. Africa is not to be pushed or hurried, ever. When people come to you about a problem, they normally will not broach the subject until they have enquired about your health and fortunes as well as that of your family and apprised you of their health and fortunes. This could take a half day to explore to the fullest. Only then will they bring up the topic of their mission.

Dad’s years in South Africa were used in developing a strong science program at Helderberg College. Under his leadership scores of his students were prepared to step into the rigorous medical program at the University of Cape Town and from thence branch out all over the southern sub-continent of Africa as doctors and hospital administrators. The rest of his years in Africa were spent founding Solusi University in Zimbabwe and carving a new school, Rusangu High School, out of virgin bush in Zambia. Rusangu has since continued to evolve into Rusangu University. Solusi has become a premier University while Helderberg has languished somewhat due to indifferent leadership. But it, too, has the potential to redeem itself and become a university in its own right. Dad firmly believed in the soon return of Christ, but his planning was long range—for eternity.

After my mother died and was buried at Solusi, Dad returned to America. He sought out an old college classmate and proposed to her: “Would you be willing to go to Africa with me for two years?” She accepted and became his worthy companion for another 28 years.

The picture shows C. Fred and his second wife Helen in their retirement.

May my endeavors and plans also be guided by eternity, O Lord, the initiator and inhabitant of eternity.

 

 

 

 

Unless the Lord Watches Over Us

[1]

Psalm 127:1 

Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

¹ Unless … the Lord watches over a city, the watchman stays alert in vain.

 

Sixty years ago, Solusi was in the veldt some six mile from the nearest neighbor. Wild animals used to wander onto campus frequently. Russell lived across the concourse from me. The soil was light and sandy and with a little irrigation grew magnificent vegetables. He had a wonderful garden, and the wild critters soon discovered it. So, he fenced it in. This kept the smaller animals out, but the kudus had no trouble jumping the fence and eating his cabbages and corn.

Not to be outdone, Russell put up a 14-foot-high fence with a high tensile steel wire at the top to discourage the kudu. When the produce had grown to a delicious size, Russell came out one morning to pick food for the table. Much of it was eaten, and the spoor was clearly that of kudu. The kudu is a magnificent antelope, one of the world’s greatest. The male sports beautiful spiral horns often six feet long. With all of its mass and horns, the kudu had easily jumped his high fence, feed unmolested, and jumped out again, all in the dark of night.

Russell now declared war. He got a good-sized gun, opened his window, and sat in the darkened room watching the garden. Well into the middle of the night he watched—in vain. Finally, he decided the kudus weren’t coming that night, so he packed up and went to bed. The next morning more crops were gone, and fresh kudu spoor told the tale.

 “So, they like to come in the early morning! I’ll get them tonight,” he decided. He went to bed early and got up around midnight. Lo and behold, the kudus had already come and gone before he got up. He never did outwit these massive raiders. Even so we wrestle daily against our enemy, who hates us.

Thank You, Lord, for being willing to watch over us and protect us—because no matter how vigilant we are, the enemy is far cleverer than we can ever be.

 

[1] https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipOUXFrh_1zMzMMleXPbpwh2OKYXANtR8Ek1oa2Y

 

Adventist Missionaries to Africa

[i]

Acts 2:17 

King James Version (KJV)

¹⁷ And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams

This weekend the Fellowship of Adventist Missionaries to Africa (FAMA) held its biennial meeting in Cicero, Indiana. I had been planning to be there for two years now, but my cancer treatments nixed that possibility. I have been leading FAMA for most of the last 4 years but left it in the very capable hands of Charles Schlunt. Imagine my delight when Dr. Russell Staples phoned me Sabbath afternoon and gave me a firsthand report of the meetings.

In 1954 my father, C. Fred Clarke, was called to Solusi Mission, then a 10 grade high school to convert it into a 4 year college for the training of Africans to prepare them to be leaders in the Adventist Church. He overcame almost insurmountable obstacles, and in due course they graduated their first four students. When I was in Tanzania, I had the privilege of working very closely with Thomas Lisso, one of those first four graduates.

Dr. Staples, Professor of World Mission, Emeritus, at Andrews University is a pioneer Adventist missionary both from Africa and to Africa. He started teaching at Solusi with Dad. Then he became the second president of the university and set it on its very successful course. It is one of the major universities in the country of Zimbabwe and was the only university to remain open during the worst of that country’s tragic financial collapse. Solusi has had as many as 5,000 students from many parts of Africa. It is practically at the center of the Southern Africa—Indian Ocean Division of Seventh-day Adventists, apparently the largest division of the Adventist Church.

Dr. Staples reported that of the close to 22 million Adventists in the world, 11 million live in Africa, and of those 3.5 million are in the SAIO Division. This success can be traced back to the far sighted leaders who yielded to the leading of the Spirit to prepare for this vast need and tremendous growth.

Last summer Sylvia and I stopped by the Staples home where we were hosted for several days. I encouraged Dr. Staples to give a presentation at the FAMA meetings. At the time he turned me down, but I was delighted when Charles visited him, and he agreed to do it. He gave an overview of the history of missions in Africa, and his presentation was well received.

If you would like to be placed on the mailing list for the FAMA Newsletter, please contact me by responding to me on this blog.

Lord, thank You for the Outpouring of Your Holy Spirit and for those willing to follow Your leading.

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[i] http://solusi.ac.zw/event/voluntary-week-of-spiritual-emphasis/

Unshakable Government

[i]

 [ii]

Hebrews 12:28

Good News Translation (GNT)

²⁸ Let us be thankful, then, because we receive a kingdom that cannot be shaken. Let us be grateful and worship God in a way that will please him, with reverence and awe.

This past week Robert Mugabe, the world’s longest ruling dictator of 37 years, was deposed by a carefully orchestrated, bloodless coup d’etat.  Mugabe had emerged the victor in a bloody civil war that rocked the idyllic, prosperous, and peaceful Southern Rhodesia or just Rhodesia. Hundreds of innocent people were killed after the war by simply stepping on land mines that had been planted throughout the country.

Mugabe started a systematic genocide attempt on the Ndebele people who had put up the strongest resistance to his assuming leadership.  He methodically drove the successful white farmers out of the country and gave their farms to his favorite military generals who had no desire or skill to farm. The net result was that when he took office, the country was exporting food to the nations around: after his policies took effect, starvation overtook the country. The international community has had to step in and feed his people.

The pictures above show how he squandered the limited wealth of his country to build himself a mansion that rivals the mansions of European nobility and royalty. As the country ran out of money, he printed vast amounts of paper money until the Zimbabwe dollar became literally worthless.

[iii]

King Ndebele, a boyhood friend of mine, once wrote, “When the British were here, we had freedom but not independence. Now we have independence, but we don’t have freedom.”

As we see the steady erosion of our rights and freedoms in our own country, I appreciate more and more the promise that we will, in God’s own time, receive the “kingdom that cannot be shaken.”

 Let us indeed “be grateful and worship God in a way that will please Him, with reverence and awe.”

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[i] https://i2.wp.com/truthorfictioncom.c.presscdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/zim5.jpg

[ii] https://i0.wp.com/truthorfictioncom.c.presscdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/zim10.jpg

[iii] http://m.wsj.net/video/20150616/061615zimnote/061615zimnote_1280x720.jpg

From Lusaka to Harare--Almost

[i]

Galatians 1:8, 9

King James Version

But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than ye have received, let him be accursed.

Hitchhiking from Lusaka, Zambia, to Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia, I caught a ride in a little, old gray Hillman. The driver, a kindly man old enough to be my father, stopped and offered me a ride as far as Salisbury, now Harare, Zimbabwe. I accepted gratefully, tucked my suitcase in the boot (trunk), and climbed into the front seat next to him. We exchanged the usual pleasantries and spoke of our various occupations. I was selling Christian books in the Copper belt region of Zambia to earn my way through Helderberg College. I forget his actual occupation, but he was a leader in the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Zambia.

After an hour or two we started down the escarpment into the Zambezi River valley. Suddenly a great, tropical thunderstorm burst upon us. Lightning flashed, thunder rolled, and the rain came down so heavily that we couldn’t see beyond the bonnet (hood) emblem of the car. He found a spot on the shoulder and pulled over to let the rain ease off.

While we sat there he started talking very earnestly about the doctrines he held so dear. One of the topics he spoke about at length was the eight New Testament verses that Protestant pastors use to support their keeping Sunday, the Catholic holy day. I had been exposed to those verses previously and countered with proofs he couldn’t contest that none of them supported a change of the holy day to Sunday. Another was the Arian heresy that Christ was merely a good man and not divine. Again I countered with Scriptural evidence that indeed Christ is God.

We drove down and across the mighty Zambesi and on up the escarpment on the other side. As we travelled he went through the major doctrines of the Witnesses, and I very ably countered each one. I confess that at the time I was not a believing Christian and was doing it purely for the joy of intellectual debate. My knowledge of Scripture clearly matched his and was probably better. My speech exhibited neither Christian love nor concern for his soul. On the other hand, he was really pleading with me for my soul.

Eventually I had angered him beyond what any God fearing person should ever do. Hours from Salisbury there was a Sinoia Hotel made for travelers who would stop for the night or at least for some liquid refreshment along their journey. The Hotel was well off the road, but he stopped along the shoulder, got out, and took my suitcase and placed it firmly on the ground. “You’re getting out here!” he commanded. I did.

The exuberance of besting a knowledgeable opponent lasted a long time. But the shame and remorse of misrepresenting my gracious Savior has lasted longer. The poor man did not understand the grace of Christ, and it should have been my responsibility to convey this to him. Unfortunately at the time I had no better understanding of grace than he did.

Thank You, Lord, for Your limitless grace and love for all of us, JW’s included. May I not be accursed because I teach “another gospel”!

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[i] https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2369/5715069061_6b1f693e34_b.jpg