Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves.

• Luke 10:1-3

One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: “Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.” So Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and a half, teaching them the word of God.

• Acts 18:9-11

“The next morning Ellen could not wait to find all those people, and neither could I. She had one address which we had not contacted. It was the address of a small house on a side street where some Christians we had once known used to live. Walking from the hotel, she finally found the street and made her way to a dingy door, weatherbeaten and cracked. She knocked boldly.
“A small man, deeply tanned and with wrinkles around his eyes, cautiously opened the door. Ellen could speak no Spanish, but she held up her Bible and one of my books (Amazing Love) which had been translated into Spanish.
“The man glanced at the books and then back to Ellen. Ellen smiled and pointed to my name on the book, then pointed back toward the city. Suddenly his whole face came alive. He threw open the door and shouted, ‘Corrie! Corrie ten Boom esta aqui. Ella esta en Havana!’
“Ellen walked in and found the room was filled with men, all kneeling on the floor. They were pastors who met each week to pray for God’s help and guidance in their difficult ministry. Ellen hurried back to the hotel and soon I was meeting with these wonderful men of God. We distributed all our books and made many new friends among God’s people. Indeed, God did have ‘much people’ in that city.”

• Corrie ten Boom, Tramp for the Lord

The photo above reminds me of my first car before its restoration, but I had mine painted yellow. It was a lemon. But I tricked it out inside with a spread-eagle shift knob (top of a small flagpole, and if you were not nice to the car, the eagle bit you in the palm of your hand) and floor, and inside walls, made of blue, pale blue, and aqua inch thick shag carpeting. I was an ROTC student with short hair – but the car was the local Hippie ride. As for the rust… that comes later in this post.

Corrie ten Boom probably used the KJV.  In growing up in a KJV world, my Dad praying using that language, I remember my memory verses, the ones that have not leaked out, in the KJV.  I say this in that almost all other translations use “many people.”

This chapter starts with Corrie ten Boom arriving in Havana, Cuba.  It was horrifically hot, and the customs agent frowned when he saw her books.  She said that they were books that she had written, and she was going to give them to her friends.

She cut a lot out, regarding the customs agent’s options, but in my five trips to P. R. China, I had been instructed to only take one Bible with me.  If I took two Bibles, they would either throw one in the trash or, the most likely outcome, send me through a side door in immigration in cuffs, awaiting the next available flight back to the USA – labeled an undesirable.  Of course, there might have been a third option to be arrested and used as a pawn to get one of their spies back from an American prison. Or some other political concession.  I thought I could just use the online Bible, but on my first trip, I learned that they blocked those websites, since I got my internet connection through the hotel.  I was without the Word of God, other than what was stored in my memory and in my heart, for the next two weeks.  I carried one Bible for the other four trips.  But I often wondered why I got that warning while no one else in the company was warned.  Hmmm.

But Corrie ten Boom prayed as the customs agent snarled angrily.  She found herself saying that she would autograph a copy especially for him.  She knew not to say such a thing, but it worked.  The agent brightened, handed her the book, and then received the signed book with gratitude and a smile on his face.  The first miracle.

She then went outside immigration to the sunny street.  Her new assistant, Ellen, who by the words used in the quote above, had settled into her job quite well, since in last week’s post, she was moaning about not having a husband.  Ellen told Tante Corrie to try to find somewhere to sit and pray.  She would find a taxi, although there were none in sight, odd for an international airport, but this was Cuba during a difficult time, the Cold War.

Tante Corrie found a stool, and after a long time of praying, Ellen showed up with a taxi.  She warned Tante Corrie to watch where she put her feet in the back seat of the car.  If not, her feet might scrape the pavement as they went to the hotel.  They reached their hotel, drenched in sweat, another miracle.  You could wring the sweat from their clothing.  Obviously, Tante Corrie was not a Southern girl (absolutely not, being born and raised in northern Holland).  But my point is that Southern girls never sweat; they glisten.  But under those conditions, maybe Southern girls might sweat.  They just won’t admit it.

But when I read that, I remembered the two times I rode in automobiles with a rusted floor.  The first time was when my mother’s father had passed away, PawPaw.  This happened when we lived in southern Mississippi for a year.  My Dad went to our old hometown, and soon to be my hometown again, to make funeral arrangements.  That left my sister halfway between the two towns, in college with no car, to have her brand-new boyfriend take leave from the Air Force to go south, pick up my mother and me, and then drive us to our destination.  I think he had an old Nash Rambler.  I recognized the old car at the time, but I cannot remember anything now other than as we traveled that night, when a car approached, I looked at the floor to see the road shining the reflection of the other cars headlights.  I was ten years old, and seeing the road beneath my feet fascinated me.  I guess I could ask my brother-in-law.  He and my sister married right after Thanksgiving of that year, before we had moved back to our old hometown.

My second experience with a rusted-out automobile was when I switched days carpooling with a church friend to the university about ten years later.  I had to take summer school courses.  My Army ROTC scholarship required me to finish in four years.  I took a full load half the time.  I took an overload half the time.  And one summer, I had a deep immersion into Philosophy.  Philosophy and carpooling with a friend.  But the second semester of summer school, my friend had enlisted two female college students to ride along.  Funny how times have changed.  The two guys did all the driving that summer and paid for all the gas while the two girls had a free ride to and from school – not even any romance, if that is what you are thinking – shame on you!  But today, with women more liberated, they would have to do their share of the driving and/or pay for the gas.  Welcome to your liberation!  But as one girl sat next to my friend in the front seat, I spent half my time reading modern Philosophy, several hundred pages assigned daily for several weeks – Nietzsche drove me nuts that summer, but then again, Friedrich Nietzsche was crazy – but the other half of the time, I watched the pavement pass by under my feet rather than gazing at the lady sitting next to me.  Odd, the front seat had not yet rusted out, and I never knew the true condition of my friend’s automobile during the first summer session that year.

But back to Tante Corrie’s trip to Havana.  Ellen and Tante Corrie lamented that they barely got into the country.  It was too hot to breathe the air.  They were having difficulty finding the people they had come to talk to, people Tante Corrie had met on her previous trip into the country.  And it was so hard getting from one place to another.  Tante Corrie was too old to walk down a hundred back alleys in this heat to find that the people no longer lived there.

They prayed, and Tante Corrie blindly opened her Bible and read from Acts 18:10. There were ‘much’ people in the city who would seek God.  Ellen was so excited; she could not wait to look for that one last address that might bear fruit.

That’s when we reach this quote.

Trust God.  He will not mislead you.  Pray; you may be intrigued by what answer you get, like a rusted taxi, but God gets you where you need to go.  And praise God.  One day, you will look back on your adventures and find that even the hard times were blessed times.  God indeed makes all things for the good for those who love Him and keep His commandments.

Lord, strengthen me.  Help me to realize that You are in charge.  You will not leave us, nor will You forsake us.  We owe our very lives to You.  Thank You for being our God, our friend, and our provider.  In Your name I pray.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.