Why My Family Traveled in Luxury Soccer Tracksuits

When travel goes wrong, you might find yourself in all kinds of unexpected situations. This was true even when I was a single. But when travel goes wrong and you’ve got small children in tow, this changes the calculus even more. When this happens, never underestimate the lengths parents will go to keep their children warm, fed, and rested enough to hold back the I-am-so-exhausted-I-will-make-the-universe-feel-my-pain meltdowns. As we regularly see in the news, even adults can reach their limits when it comes to the constrictions and indignities of modern air travel. So, I don’t blame the little ones for showing on the outside what most of us big people are feeling on the inside. But for everyone’s sake, we have found it best to keep our kids away from that point of no return whenever possible.

Speaking of indignities, most airlines don’t count our region of Central Asia important enough to warrant flights during waking hours. The vast majority of our flights come and go between 2 and 5 am. This is of course to line up with the morning flight schedules in the “important” airports of the region. And yes, it’s brutal for small children. Mind you, this is how almost every trip to or from our region either begins or ends, standing in airport lines with bleary-eyed offspring at an ungodly hour of the night.

So, this was the typical beginning of a trip back to the US two summers ago. But something had delayed our first flight, which meant we sat an extra two hours in our departure airport, which meant we missed our connecting flight in Doha, Qatar. Having traveled through Doha before I was hopeful that they might simply put us on another flight, or in case of a lengthy delay, put us up in the hotel inside the airport.

Unfortunately, we landed and were informed that for the second of the three legs of our journey, they’d have to put us on a much longer flight (to Dallas, sixteen hours in the air), and that we’d have to wait inside the airport for another seventeen hours. And sorry, the airport hotel was full. And since we only had our vaccination cards, but not a valid PCR test, we were not allowed to enter the city to make our own accommodations. One very thoughtful member of airport staff tried to convince us that we had a decent chance of making it through immigration illegally, but we thanked her and decided that would probably make our situation go from bad to worse. Plus it was illegal. After all, the Doha airport is relatively new and clean. Surely we could figure something out.

We texted our teammates to let them know our situation and to call in some prayer support. One of them reminded me that we carried a travel credit card with trip delay coverage, up to $500 per person. I had not remembered this detail, so I thanked him profusely and tried to put a plan together as we sat on the floor and my kids played UNO. There was a quieter lounge with semi-private couch areas where we could get some sleep. We had been given access to it once before while traveling during the height of the Covid-19 travel shutdowns, when the massive Doha airport was eery and abandoned. Now that things were getting back to normal the lounge charged a lot for entry, but with all the hotel options closed off I thought we had a good chance of getting reimbursed for it through our card. If we got in for six hours’ access, that would mean fresh food and hopefully a few hours of sleep for the family before figuring out the next ten hours in the airport, and then the sixteen hour flight.

But there was one other problem. It was summer and so we hadn’t packed warm clothes in our carryons. And the airport was freezing. At the time, our kids were three, eight, and ten. They’ve always been on the smaller side and tend to get cold easily. This is especially true of our daughter who has type-1 diabetes. So, part two of my mission needed to be finding some kind of warm garments or blankets. This would make sleep more likely, and hopefully also keep them from getting sick.

Blessedly, the lounge we were hoping for wasn’t full and we managed to claim one of the semi-private couch areas. So far, so good. Thinking the more difficult part of the plan accomplished, I headed back out into the duty free area of the airport to find some warm sweatshirts or blankets. The airport had dozens of stores selling clothing, so I didn’t think it would take too long to find something reasonable.

I waved and smiled at the attendant in the first store I walked into and I went over to look at a rack of sweatshirts. My smile vanished as I looked at the tag – $450. Wide-eyed, I quickly exited that store and went into the one next to it. But the sweatshirts there were $300 apiece. In store after store I had the same experience. It seemed that luxury clothing was the only kind for sale in this airport. Where were the smart yet affordable Central Asian brands like LC Waikiki? There were no blankets or other warm things for sale anywhere. Just clothing roughly the price of a kidney.

The best option I could find were tracksuits/sweatsuits in the store of a football/soccer club, Paris Saint-Germain. These were warm, they had them in the various sizes we needed, and they ran just below $100 for the kids sizes and a little above $100 for the adults. After several rounds of the duty free area, I kept coming back to the PSG store as I slowly resigned myself to the truth that dropping over $500 on tracksuits was the cheapest option available to me. But would I be able to convince the credit card insurance to reimburse these? It was a gamble.

I thought of my kids shivering, curled up, and trying to sleep on airport couches. I thought of the dark patches beneath my wife’s eyes and the very long way we still had to go to even begin the second leg of our journey. I gritted my teeth, and bought the matching tracksuits.

I shook my head as I walked away and back toward the lounge, loaded with bags of PSG merchandise. My family didn’t even follow professional sports. Apart from a season in high school in Melanesia where I followed the Australian National Rugby League, I’ve never made the time nor had the desire to follow either American sports or those more popular globally, like football/soccer. In fact, one of the quickest ways to make my or my wife’s eyes glaze over is to turn a group conversation to professional sports.

But now, I told my wife as I returned to the lounge, now we would need to become soccer fans. Not because I had a sudden affinity for the team or for some guy named Messi who apparently played for them. No, simply because we were now financially invested in the Paris Saint-Germain Football Club. So invested, we would in fact travel the world as a family in matching luxury track suits. The kids, having been told that they were now officially fans of a French soccer team, put on the warm tracksuits, and promptly fell asleep. My wife liked hers also, though her eyes nearly popped out of her head when I whispered the price to her.

There have been times over the years when we’ve eaten at some very sketchy places, because that was what was required to keep the family going while on the road. Apparently, this was the other end of the spectrum. Sometimes you eat dodgy kebabs. Sometimes you don rich kid tracksuits.

During the rest of our time in Doha and even on the plane, fans of PSG said hi to us, gave us fist bumps, or otherwise complimented our sporty-seeming family and our matching outfits. We did our best to smile and play the part – and then shoot one another sideways glances. We were frauds, but at least we were warm frauds.

After what felt like days later, we finally made it to Dallas, where one last layover – at a hotel this time – would get us to our final flight the next day. At least being back in America meant people didn’t really know about professional soccer and would stop commenting on our wardrobe.

We walked into the lobby and were immediately greeted with a cheer by the man behind the counter.

“You fans of PSG?! That’s my team, bro!”

p.s. Thankfully, months later, the travel insurance did indeed reimburse the tracksuits.

To support our family as we head back to the field, click here.

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The Shame of a Prodigal Daughter

Several years ago my wife and others hosted a Valentine’s Day outreach for local women. As a part of the event, they read the story of the prodigal son from Luke 15, and led a discussion about its meaning and implications.

Surprisingly, when they asked the local ladies what they thought about the father’s response to the return of his wayward son, these ladies responded that the response was right and good. “That’s what a father should do for a son.”

Either my wife or one of our teammates then posed the question differently. “What if it had been a prodigal daughter rather than a prodigal son?”

At this question, the mood of the room shifted dramatically. Everyone knew that a prodigal daughter should never be welcomed home and forgiven like that. No, if it had been a daughter rather than a son who had dishonored her family by wasting her inheritance on prostitutes in a far country, she would be a dead woman. She would never be welcomed home with joy and celebration. Instead, if she showed her face again the men of the family would have to kill her in order to restore their honor in the eyes of the community.

In this situation, because of their own culture these local women didn’t feel the shamefulness of the younger son’s actions, even after it had been explained to them. But when the connection had been made with an equivalent example from their own culture, then the weightiness – and the scandalous nature – of the father’s actions sunk in.

Much has been made of the connections between contemporary Middle Eastern/Central Asian honor-shame cultures and the cultures of the New Testament era. And there are many similarities. These cultures are certainly closer to one another than they are to the modern west. Yet there are also some very significant differences that mean a direct understanding or resonance with New Testament era culture shouldn’t be assumed.

One major difference would be the way in which our Central Asian culture places the burden of the family’s honor almost entirely on the conduct of their women (at least in part a downstream effect of Islam). The honorable reputation, community standing, and future prospects of the extended family all hinge on whether the community believes the young women and the married women are sexually pure and faithful. If I had to quantify it, I’d say it’s something like ninety percent of family honor that comes down to this. The other ten percent is made up of whether or not the men are hospitable, loyal patrons and clients, not thieves, not drunkards, not gamblers, and if they come from a line of honorable fathers.

The men do have a small part to play in maintaining the family honor, but in general they are given all kinds of grace and freedom to go out and sow their wild oats. At the end of day, they are the beloved sons who will be welcomed home by mama and papa and all will be forgiven. The same cannot be said for the daughters of the family. One misstep – or one nasty rumor – can spell disaster for them. This is why the women of our people group are so much more observant in their Islam. It’s also why believing women are outnumbered by believing men by about ten to one. If you feel that this is terribly unjust, you are right.

So, what does the gospel laborer do in this kind of situation where the culture means the locals do not understand and feel the point of the parable? In our telling of the story, should we replace the son in the parable with a daughter? Not at all. Though it may be tempting to do something like this, we must remember the proper roles of the word and the culture when it comes to communicating God’s truth. The word of God is where all the authority and the grounding of our teaching comes from. The culture, on the other hand, is what we use to illustrate.

Rather than replacing the prodigal son with a prodigal daughter upfront, instead we need to explain what this parable would have meant and felt like to the original audience. Then, we use a comparable example of shamefulness and scandalous forgiveness from our target culture to help our hearers wrestle with the offensive grace communicated by Jesus in this parable. In this way, we are being faithful to God’s powerful word as it was originally revealed, and we are also doing our best to help our audience understand it with both their heads and their hearts. This is in fact just what the ladies on our team did during their Valentine’s outreach.

Any of us reformed-types who scoff at the study of culture out of a professed trust in the word of God are missing something important here; namely, that effective teaching and preaching requires more than faithful exegesis of the text and argumentation. It also requires faithful illustration and application. To do all of this you must study the text first, and then study your people.

As with any culture, the honor-shame dynamics of our Central Asian culture contain both hindrances and helps when it comes to making sense of God’s word. Though they are wrong to place the burden of family honor almost solely on the shoulders of their women, they are not entirely wrong in their belief that sin means that someone must die in order for honor to be restored.

From the very beginning, sin deserves death (Gen 2:17). This divine law has never changed. Their culture simply needs to universalize it. Instead of just women who have allegedly shamed the family, every single individual deserves death because of how he has fallen short of the glory (the honor) of the Father. The amazing good news is that a perfect Son has been killed so that we don’t have to be. He has died in our place and has taken upon himself the righteous anger of the shamed Father. By doing so, he has also satisfied the demands of divine honor (Mark 10:45, Rom 3:21-26).

The local women at the Valentine’s outreach shuddered when they thought of the forgiveness of a prodigal daughter. But such a daughter’s shame is not any greater than their shame, or my shame. The sacrifice of the divine Son means that we no longer need to kill our children to restore the family honor. Someone else can cover that shame and restore honor in the only court that really matters, the eternal one. Whether prodigal sons or daughters or prideful older sisters or brothers, we must all turn from our futile attempts to deal with our sin and shame and trust in him alone.

For any of those local women, to let go of their hard-fought honor and to admit their true shame is a terrifying thing. How could it not be when your conformity has been enforced all your life at knife-point?

But some will. And those who do will know the amazing warmth of the Father’s welcome – and the wonder of his undeserved honor.

To support our family as we head back to the field, click here.

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photos are from Unsplash.com

Mr. Jamison for the Win

Note the traditional parachute pants, they will feature in this story.

The trip had been remarkably efficient. Six months into our medical leave I had traveled back to Central Asia with one of my brothers in order to close down our house and pack, give away, or sell everything. At that point, it seemed that we would need to remain in the US for some years to come and I was determined to not leave the work of closing down our household to my teammates.

In the first four days of a five day trip, we had sorted everything, packed suitcases and a massive rug to bring back, held a sale for expats, set aside bags of stuff to donate to refugees, attended a baptism picnic, attended a funeral which led to a sleepover, preached at the church plant, and managed to spend some good time with most of the local believers. Somebody must have been praying for us because I don’t think I have ever been more efficient in my entire life.

One final step remained before we could turn over the keys of our old stone house to the landlord. My local friend, Adam, who had been mostly healed of paranoid schizophrenia, had assured me it would be a simple one. He knew a guy who bought household goods in bulk so that he could sell them secondhand in the bazaar. Once our sale was finished, Adam would bring in the reseller, we’d agree on a price, and then the reseller’s men would clear everything out. I didn’t worry about this final step because it seemed to be so simple.

However, once the resellers assessed our remaining household goods, things began to get complicated. We had estimated that a conservative value of the remaining goods was around $2,000. But because of the business model, we’d likely need to settle for half of that. The resellers, for their part, offered us $300. And wouldn’t budge.

Now, there is a kind of robust bargaining that is common in our Central Asian culture, one where the various parties haggle back and forth and mutual respect and even enjoyment stay a part of the conversation. This negotiation began that way, but it was quickly turning into a very unhappy one. Both Adam and I were shocked at the price they had given, and after pushing them as hard as we honorably could, they were only willing to come up to $350. The resellers seemed insulted that we didn’t seem to agree with their assessment that our goods were basically worthless.

We sat there in what used to be our living room as the resellers repeatedly complained about the economy and insulted the quality of the household goods we were trying to sell them. My frustration was building, making it harder to think and speak clearly in the local language. What the resellers continued to call worthless were mainly items we had bought from other missionary families and good quality stores. There were Persian rugs, kitchen appliances, solid beds, good tools, and a nice exercise bike – the kinds of things you buy when you’re thinking about items that will serve a family for a decade or more.

More than this, these were household goods that had been purchased for my family and that my family had used, enjoyed, and taken care of. Some, like an espresso maker, were Christmas gifts to one another that we couldn’t carry back. Selling them at a decent price was hard. Selling them at the price the resellers were insisting on felt like a punch to the gut. I shook my head, knowing that we did indeed need to make some money off of these items. We had moved back to the US in late 2022. Inflation made it a terrible time to try to set up a new household in America.

“I mean, look at all this junk,” the reseller started up again. “Can you point out one item to me that has any real quality or value?”

“Yes,” I insisted, “yes, I can. Look at that area rug, it’s in great condition. And that water cooler and purifier as well. And that exercise bike is solid, it’s the kind of thing you’d pay $100 for at the exercise stores in the marketplace.”

“Ha!” scoffed the reseller. “If I buy this junk for more than $350, there’s no way I’ll be able to make any kind of profit off it.”

He turned to Adam, “These foreigners don’t understand. Tell him, this is all worthless. That bike (hah), that bike is worthless.”

Adam, to his credit, just sat there looking perplexed, but clearly not agreeing with the conduct of the reseller he had earlier been so positive about.

We were at an impasse. We needed to get rid of the stuff. The next day was our last one, and we needed to turn over the keys to an empty house. Should we risk trying to find another reseller? We might run out of time.

At that moment, we heard a knock at the door. It was a mustachioed neighbor wearing the more informal traditional outfit of a collared shirt tucked into baggy parachute pants, pulled up to the belly button. He had asked earlier if he could come by to see what was still for sale, but we had completely forgotten about him.

Adam and I tried to shake ourselves out of our frustration with the resellers and stood up to give the warm and respectful greetings expected between men and neighbors in even the most informal situations. The resellers, not knowing the neighbor, stayed seated, stewing.

What followed could be called providential irony.

“Wow, look at that exercise bike!” the neighbor said. “Is it for sale? I’ve been wanting one just like it! Can I try it?”

For whatever reason, at this point Adam switched back to his British English in his reply, gesturing grandly, “Give it a try, Mr. Jamison!”

Our neighbor, not named Mr. Jamison, and not knowing English, nevertheless seemed to understand. He climbed on the exercise bike, still wearing his traditional baggy pants. He smiled widely as he pedaled in front of me, Adam, my brother, and the sullen resellers.

We all sat there watching him, the enthusiasm of this kind neighbor pedaling away on the exercise bike like some kind of pleasant song that wakes you up from a bad dream.

“This is nice! I’ll pay you forty dollars for this.”

“We’ll take it!” Adam called out, probably louder than he had been intending, and both of us shot a meaning-filled glance at the resellers.

“Can I look around some more? Is there more for sale?” asked the neighbor. Adam told him he could go explore the goods in other rooms.

“You know,” Adam leaned over and said to me in English, “I think I might be able to find another reseller. Should we risk it and send these guys off?”

“Definitely,” I said.

We told the resellers we would be getting a second opinion and they huffed and puffed their way out of the house and the courtyard, remonstrating that we’d never find a better price than they had offered.

The arrival of the neighbor had come at just the right time. It was a small thing, but it shook us out of our death spiral of a conversation with the resellers, and gave us courage for one more risk before the trip was up.

“Who’s Mr. Jamison?” my brother later asked me. “That was hilarious. Why did he call the neighbor that?”

“I have no idea. But that neighbor’s timing and what he did with the exercise bike? That was perfect. Tonight it was definitely Mr. Jamison for the win.”

Later that night, Adam somehow found some more resellers, who were happy to pay $650 to take everything else off our hands. And we were happy to oblige them.

The next day, we closed the courtyard door to the old stone house and turned in the keys to the elderly landlord, who drank chai with us and cried at our departure.

Back in America, my family used some of the money from the sale of our stuff to buy a good used Toyota Sedan from a family in our church. The license plate said “NED,” so we decided the car’s first name should be Ned.

But his last name we proclaimed Jamison. Ned Jamison.

To support our family as we head back to the field, click here.

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

A Family Update

This is the email update we just sent out to our prayer list. I haven’t posted many of these here to my blog, but wanted to do so for this one because it provides a good overview of the road we’ve walked over the past year or so.

Fourteen months ago we left Central Asia for an extended medical leave, not sure if we would be coming back. After seven years laboring to see healthy churches started among our focus people group, our bodies and hearts were showing the strain – even though we had tried hard to find a posture of sustainable sacrifice. One teammate put it best, it was like we had patched most of the many holes in our boat, only to realize when we slowed down that the boat was still full of water. And it would take a long time to bail it out. Our medical personnel, counselors, and teammates told us it was time for a season bailing water, rest, and hopefully, healing.

The year that followed was a strange one. We moved back to Kentucky, put the kids in a full-time school for the first time, plugged into regular counseling, saw numerous doctors, and wrestled with our future. It’s hard to wait. Hard to wait for healing. Hard to wait for clarity. And it was hard to come to terms with the costs we’d incurred as a family. I (A.W.) for the first time found myself profoundly doubting if the costs of mission are actually worth it, if God will actually take care of those who are sent. Sure, good fruit around them comes from their ministries. But what about them? What about their hearts, their bodies, their kids?

In the midst of a season where we felt great perplexity and disorientation, when God himself seemed distant, God’s people were not. We were surrounded by steady, kind, faithful Christian friends and family. I remember realizing that God was showing his nearness to us through his people. In the midst of this community we felt like we could stay in the US, if that was what God would ask. But what if he asked us to go back overseas? Could we do that if he asked? All we knew for a long time was that we did not have enough clarity to commit to either. So we waited some more.

In the meantime, our health improved. And even though we didn’t get complete clarity on the causes of the different health challenges affecting our family, we gained much insight into more effective prevention and treatment. Slowly our hearts began to heal also. During the fall, we received an invitation to return and serve in a city we lived in four years ago. Our response to this invitation surprised us. We were actually open to it! We decided that we’d pray, get counsel, and make a decision by the new year.

On Christmas Eve, we said yes. We feel that returning is the right next step of obedience, the right next step of faith in a God who is truly trustworthy and a rewarder, even in suffering. Some things will be different upon our return. We’ll be going back with one of our partner organizations, though still in close partnership with our former org teams and churches. The role that we’ve been invited into is one of content creation. I (A.W.) will be overseeing the creation and translation of solid local language articles, books, and hopefully also audio and video resources. The aim will be to give the fledgling churches, new leaders, and new believers among our people group true, compelling, and beautiful resources that will help to establish them more deeply in their faith – resources that will help healthy churches get planted and endure, which has been our aim from the beginning. This role will allow my wife to focus more on family during this season, and allow us to find the right posture as a family to support the crucial ongoing church planting work.

We are hoping to move back to Central Asia in August of this year. This time around, we will be raising support. So that means we’ll need a solid network of individuals and churches who will commit to regular support or one-time gifts, and in this way to partner with us. Would you consider supporting us in this costly, yet practical way?

We have immediate need of one-time gifts that will help us transition onto support, and then we will building our monthly support and moving fund over the next six months.

As always, we will continue to be in desperate need of your prayers and friendship as we head back into this wonderful and difficult labor. We know that many of you have kept on praying for us, because we’ve experienced some very clear answers to prayer over this past year. Not the least of which is the recovery of our faith to trust again that the costs are indeed worth it. Worth it now, by faith. And worth it in the resurrection, by sight.

We’ll be sending out more updates soon. But for now we wanted to tell you how God has been faithful to us and how he has opened up a new door of service back overseas. We’d love prayer for the following things:

-For God to continue growing our trust in Him, no matter where we are

-For wisdom in shepherding our kids through yet another transition

-For God to raise up a solid network of supporting individuals and churches

-For our ongoing efforts to help local believers from a distance get theological education, be supported in ministry, and start businesses

-For the church plants that have been started in our region to grow in maturity and health

In Him,

A.W. Workman and family

To support our family as we head back to the field, click here.

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photos are from Unsplash.com

Not Yet in the Fold

“Hi, I’m Tom* the Catholic. I’m the only Catholic in this bunch. My daughter goes here.”

I shook hands with the elderly man who sported a ponytail and a ball cap, curious about his story. I hadn’t expected to meet a Catholic Tom at this evening cookout for a rural Southern Baptist church. After conversing with me for a few minutes about U.S. foreign policy, Tom ducked away once a group picture was mentioned. The church pastor then approached me, looking a little unsure about what Tom may have said to me.

“Saw you talking to Tom. Just wanted to let you know that he’s not a member here – not yet a believer. But he keeps coming to our cookouts. We hope that the truth he’s hearing will sink in sooner or later. Anyway, thanks for talking to him!”

“For sure,” I responded, “We’ve got a lot of friends like Tom in Central Asia. At some point, all we can figure is that if they keep coming around, and if we keep talking about Jesus, then at some level, they may be open to Jesus.”

The pastor and I were standing on a rural Kentucky balcony on a muggy summer’s evening, but my mind was already back in Central Asia, thinking about Mohammad* the photographer. Side note: there are a lot of Mohammads in Muslim countries, so we often have to attach some kind of designator to the name to keep them all straight. Mohammad the photographer, Mohammad the redhead, Mohammad the rapper, etc.

Mohammad the photographer has been a regular attendee at our Central Asian church plant’s services, baptism picnics, and other hangouts for about five years. His best friend, Darius*, came to faith at the end of our first term and is now an elder-in-training. Mohammad, on the other hand, a gentle, spectacled, tech-oriented fellow, is still not in the fold.

The issue is not gospel-clarity. In fact, Mohammad will sometimes explain the gospel to other unbelieving friends in his and Darius’ circle. The issue is not even a lack of desire to believe. Just this past month, Mohammad told me that he wants to be able to believe but also that he isn’t interested in faking the presence of genuine faith when he knows it’s not there yet.

“I used to be so focused on logic, science, and evidence, a skeptic. I demanded water-tight proof that Christianity is true. But now I know that doesn’t work. There is proof, but it is the love that believers have that is the proof. The proof is the love. Now that I know this, I do hope that I can become a believer soon. I feel like I am close.”

When Mohammad shared this with me, it was 3 a.m., the day after the grandmother who had raised him and for whom he had been a devoted caretaker had died. A solid core of the believers had attended the Islamic funeral, and Darius had convinced him to spend the night at his apartment with some of us believing men. And while I had hoped that we could comfort Mohammad in his grief, I hadn’t expected to get into such a personal gospel conversation with him that night. So much had been shared with him already, and my brain was foggy from lack of sleep. But Central Asians tend to go deep once it’s past midnight. And the presence of death evidently meant that eternity was weighing on Mohammad’s heart. Laying on a floor mattress close to the couch where Mohammad was laying, I chewed on what Mohammad had shared and ventured a response.

“You are right that the proof is the love. That’s exactly what Jesus says, that the love of his followers for one another is proof that God has sent Jesus into the world to save us, that the message of Jesus is true. Mohammad, you say you hope you can become a believer soon, and I am praying for that also. But you know, you can’t make yourself a believer. God must do that. What you need is for God to reveal himself and his love to you in such a powerful way that it changes you and causes you to truly repent and follow him.”

“Yes,” Mohammad agreed, thinking deeply. “I do want God to show his love to me in that way.”

“Well, then you need to be asking God every day that he will do that, and not stopping until he does. Do you think you can do that?”

“I can. I should.”

“Actually, can I pray this for you right now?”

Mohammad agreed, and we prayed together, asking God to sovereignly reveal his saving love for him.

As far as I know, this prayer has not yet been answered. Mohammad keeps coming around, keeps being exposed to the believing community, to the church, to the love that is the proof that the gospel is true. Thankfully, the body has and will continue to walk with him.

When I think of Muhammad the photographer and Tom the Catholic, I am reminded that, yes, the church needs clear lines of membership for those who are “inside” and those who are “outside.” But the church also needs a category for those who are unbelieving long-term friends, potential God-seekers as it were. Relational space and regular opportunities are needed where these can keep coming around in order to witness the love between believers that is such compelling evidence of our faith’s reality (John 13:35, 17:23).

Do we offer these kinds of relational and physical spaces? Are we willing to keep welcoming, to keep praying for these long-term unbelieving friends, even when we know that there is seemingly nothing else that we can say to help them believe? Even when we have done everything we can, and now await a saving miracle, one that is out of our hands?

May we not lose heart or even grow weary of the awkwardness when it comes to friends like Tom the Catholic and Mohammad the Photographer. It is good for the Christian to exhaust all their evangelistic resources and to see that, good though they were, in the end they were not sufficient for creating the new birth in their friend. It’s good to wrestle with how to keep showing love in long-term evangelistic relationships, even when they seem like they’ve plateaued. Like the persistent widow in Luke 18, may we be willing to pray and not give up, trusting that, sooner or later, our petition will be heard by the judge.

The wind blows where it wishes (John 3:8). The Spirit moves according to his sovereign will. We sow the word, we show hospitality, we pray relentlessly. And we wait, expectantly, for our friends to be brought into the fold.

*Some names have been changed for security. Others, like Tom and Mohammad, are secure enough because there are so many of them!

Photo by Arthur Mazi on Unsplash

This post was first published on immanuelnetwork.org

The Transformation of JJ the Bully: An Addendum

So my mom fact-checked my story about JJ the bully. And rather than just editing a few places in the article for historical accuracy, I thought I’d write a separate post about the differences between my memory and my mom’s in order to explore the nature of memory and memoir a bit, as well as to include an ending to the story that I had forgotten about, but which even further emphasizes the effect that unexpected kindness had on him.

First, my mom informed me that the details of the second scene of my story weren’t quite right. This was the part where I wrote that she took us to 7-Eleven in order to buy a slurpee for JJ, and that we had chosen to buy him a blueberry one. In fact, she told me that we first drove to JJ’s house, where my mom told him that we were going to Rita’s Water Ice, and asked him if he’d like to come along. Rita’s is a warm-weather staple of the area northeast of Philadelphia, now branded Rita’s Italian Ice, but back then in the regional dialect it was known as Rita’s Wooder Ice. Italian ice is sort of like a snow cone, but with much finer ice, and it has a denser consistency than a smoothie or slurpee. However, JJ couldn’t come with us, so we asked him what flavor we could bring back for him. He chose lemon.

Rita’s, and not 7-Eleven. Lemon, and not blueberry. An initial visit to his house and return, rather than one surprising visit. Assuming that mom’s recollections are the correct ones – which is a good assumption since she was thirty seven and I was seven – it’s worth asking how and why my mind remembered things the way that it did.

I only remembered standing at JJ’s door once, and not the initial time that we had stopped by. Why might that be? Well, our brains do tend to remember situations in piecemeal fashion, “deleting” the vast majority of our memories that don’t seem significant, while holding onto the parts that had some kind of emotional significance. Fear, for example, is one of the strongest “cementers” of memory. If you have ever been unexpectedly put on the spot by a teacher, and that situation made your nervous system kick into high gear, then you will likely remember that scene for the rest of your life. Therefore, it’s likely that my mind deleted the first visit, categorizing it as not that significant, whereas it remembered the second time we were at JJ’s door. Why? Because of the emotion on JJ’s face. Human minds mirror one another’s emotions, so when I saw JJ’s expression I also felt his emotion. And this was significant enough that it was categorized under scenes to be archived for future reflection.

Why then did my mind swap 7-Eleven for Rita’s, and blueberry for lemon? Here we probably have a case of the mind naturally filling in the gaps in a memory from other similar memories of that same season (Perhaps I chose blueberry for myself at Rita’s that day). This freedom the mind feels to cut and paste certain details of stories, to mix memories together, and to remember things that didn’t really happen is what makes an individual’s memory alone less than rock-solid evidence of the actual history.

While there is always a certain kind of validity to the details of one’s memories – your mind remembers things in a certain way for a reason, meaning there is a true story being told about you even in memories that are not quite factual – human memory is not exactly a copy/paste of the historical situation. This is why having multiple witnesses is so important for a legal case. It’s also why it can be so helpful to compare our memories with others who were there. Even in situations where everyone recalls things accurately (as with the supernaturally-enabled writers of the gospels), each human brain involved is remembering only partial details of that scene, meaning that the combination of true stories leads to a fuller story overall. Alas, only the mind of God is perfectly and comprehensively aligned with the historical record for any given event.

All this means we should read or write memoir with a grain of salt, knowing that even the recollections of an honest author will come with some inevitable gaps, additions, or personal interpretations mixed in. But the fact that all natural memoir is like this means that once this is understood as a given, then we can engage in the genre with freedom, enjoyment, and humility. We try our best, and neither author nor reader need get bent out of shape when it comes out that certain details were a little off. It’s simply the nature of the genre, the nature of memory. As with biblical hermeneutics, knowing what genre we are in is key for proper interpretation and response, even for proper enjoyment. Memoir is the genre of significant true experiences that are remembered by the brain in a mostly-true, limited-perspective kind of way. And these very limitations of memoir are what make it so much fun.

No matter how good the story, the reader knows that there’s always more detail that might be unveiled, things that even the author missed. Sometimes the discovery of an omission makes the story even better. All of our favorite true stories conceal fascinating details that we have yet to learn – even the biblical ones. I would not be surprised if significant time is spent in eternity filling in these gaps. “Okay, Matthew, I invited you over for chai because I’ve simply got to know a little bit more about those dead saints who got out of their graves and wandered around Jerusalem after the crucifixion. What exactly was going on there?”

When I talked to my mom this week, she told me that I had ended the story of JJ the bully prematurely. As it went down, sometime later my mom was jogging in their neighborhood when she came across JJ again. She asked him if he had enjoyed his lemon water ice. JJ’s response?

“I didn’t drink it. I put it in my freezer because I wanted to keep it… I’ve never had anyone do something that nice for me before.”

Maybe someday I’ll meet JJ again. Because now I want to know – Did he ever drink it? How long did it stay in the freezer? Did his mom eventually throw it away? Does he still have it in his freezer? How does it end?!

At this point, only God knows, the author of all authors, storyteller of all storytellers. Good thing we’ll get to spend eternity with him. I can’t wait to hear more of his stories.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

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The Transformation of JJ the Bully

This Sunday our pastor preached on loving our enemies, from Matthew chapter 5. As he challenged us to consider if our lives will contain any stories of radical love for our enemies, I remembered observing just such a story in my elementary school days. It’s a story of how my mom modeled returning good for evil – and thereby helped her younger sons to experience the power of actually following Jesus in this regard.

My second grade year was the roughest so far since we had returned to the US in the middle of my pre-K year, when my dad had died on the field. We had moved to a different town in the Philadelphia area, and that meant a new public elementary school. Overall, I didn’t have it as bad as my older brothers. My classroom experience was merely downgraded from wonderful to okay. Though I do remember the frustration of having to leave class movie time every Thursday in order to attend a speech therapy class. Those American R’s are tricky. But I had good friends in my class and a decent, if somewhat reserved, teacher. No, it was the bus ride where things were downright bad.

My fourth-grade brother and I managed to become the target of a crew of fifth grade bullies, led by a ringleader named JJ. Sometimes this had to do with our insistence on trying to sit in the back row of the bus, even though these boys claimed this as their exclusive territory. I remember being wrestled out of the back row, flipped over seat backs, and thrown up against metal window frames. We were much smaller than these older boys, so I’m not sure what caused us to keep on trying to assert our rights to the back seats. Perhaps it was the principle of it. Or perhaps there was something we had absorbed from the Melanesian highlands where we had grown up, where the locals were always ready for a fight.

Other fights involved teasing over the conspicuous size of our family’s ears and how the morning sunlight would shine through them, creating quite the pinkish-orange glow on the sides of our heads. Or the cross necklaces that we wore, one of which JJ tore off during a fight. While it was mostly angry boyish wrestling, there were some times that punches were thrown, though I think this was mostly directed at my older brother. I have a distinct memory of him getting punched in the stomach.

These conflicts on the school bus, as well as the difficulty my older brothers were having in their other school relationships, began to bleed into our relationships at home. My brothers and I began to fight with one another more often, a development which concerned my mom. With the exception of occasional squabbles, we three boys had always been pretty close to one another and related not only as brothers, but also as good friends. These growing conflicts would ultimately cause my mom to pull us out of public school in order to homeschool us for a year and a half. But first she had a bully to transform.

My mom has always been a woman not just of word, but of deed. She not only moved with her young family to the mission field, but later moved back to the field as a single mom. In the US as well as in Melanesia, she was not only personally involved in ministering to others, but active in trying to find ways for her boys to do so also. This often went well, though I do remember one time when after a snowstorm our family tried to serve a neighbor by brushing the snow off his car. We very quickly found out that in America, you don’t touch other people’s cars.

All the fights with JJ must have had my mom’s sanctified imagination chewing on what could be done. One day she told us that we were going to 7-Eleven, an American convenience store common in the northeast (common, but in Philly not as beloved as Wawa, where you can get a hoagie and Yoohoo to enjoy with your Poppop). When we arrived at 7-Eleven, she asked my brother and I to pick out a slurpee for JJ. A slurpee is a blended ice drink also known as a slushie, icee, etc., a kind of gas station drink full of sugar that sends kids into acrobat mode and bright food dye that stains their tongues. We chose a large blueberry slurpee and our mom drove us to JJ’s house.

The next scene I remember we are standing at JJ’s door. JJ’s mom, a pleasant enough-seeming woman, had answered the door. JJ was standing beside and a little behind her, looking not a little shocked and seeming very small. My mom explained that we had wanted to bring something for JJ, and she handed him the slurpee. JJ’s eyes were wide, but he seemed genuinely thankful. And since this was the 1990’s, his mom didn’t seem weird about it either, but let her kid keep the drink, and made him verbalize his thanks. I’m sure my mom and JJ’s mom said lots of other grownup things, but that’s all faded from my memory.

What hasn’t faded is the transformation that was visible on JJ’s the bully’s face and in his demeanor. He had been downright cruel to us for months, a classic bully, but this act of unexpected, undeserved kindness seemed to deeply disturb him in the right kinds of ways. He was never the same after that. JJ the bully actually became kind to us, consistently, from that point on. That was one powerful blueberry slurpee.

The last memory I have of JJ must have been toward the very end of that school year, because the weather was warm and it felt like summer. He had invited us over to his neighborhood to join in a big game of capture the flag.

Years and years later I would find myself in an intense text fight with one of my Central Asian friends. The abusive texts kept coming long after I had, exasperated, stopped responding. Then I remembered JJ, and the power of a blueberry slurpee, the power of loving your enemies, and turning the other cheek when struck. My young wife and I grabbed some cupcakes from somewhere and we headed off to Walmart, unannounced, where my friend worked. The mean texts kept coming in as we drove. But when we found him at the back of the store, smiled, and handed him the cupcakes, a look came over him that I recognized. The hardness melted away, replaced by a kind of sheepish kindness, as if something powerful had suddenly been heaped upon his head. Just like JJ, actually obeying Jesus by doing something kind to someone cruel had made all the difference – had even proved transformative.

I had learned how to do this from my mom, who of course, had learned how to do this from Jesus.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles” (Matthew 5:38–41).

Addendum: After writing this post I found out from my mom that I had unintentionally changed or omitted a few important details from this story. I have written about these corrections here.

Photo by Thomas Park on Unsplash

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Ivy League Education vs. Middle Eastern Racism

Melissa* sat in a metal chair next to the overgrown pool, clearly distressed. She turned from Farhad* to try to catch her parents’ eyes, looking for reassurance. As a graduate student at an Ivy League school, she didn’t know what to do with what Farhad was telling her. His forceful accented words were not fitting within her worldview, within her moral framework of highly-educated liberal New England.

I was manning the grill nearby and could see the dynamics. By this time I knew Farhad and could have guessed what he was going on about just by his body language. As a member of a minority people group who had suffered genocide when he was a teenager, Farhad harbored a deeply-rooted hatred of the majority Middle Eastern people group who had slaughtered his own. And a deeply-rooted hatred of Islam, the faith they used to justify their atrocities. Farhad was not a Christian, but he was definitely post-Islamic, and had been willing to study the Bible with me and Reza* and even to attend church with us.

Tall, in his forties, with slicked-back shoulder-length black hair and a narrow angular face, Farhad liked to wear a suit to church with a Hawaiian shirt underneath, generously unbuttoned at the top, 1970’s style. He had kind dark eyes and a genuine smile, though he was missing one of his front upper teeth – the result of a mugging incident soon after he had arrived in the US as a refugee.

“I get kidnapped by Al Qaeda. I almost die. But I keep all my teeth. I come to America. I lose my tooth! Why?!” he was known to ask when telling the story of how he got mugged in the apartment complex where he was placed by his resettlement program.

Now, he was unloading on Melissa, who had simply come down to the Louisville area to visit her parents during a school break. Her parents, both professors at Ivy League schools, would come down periodically to the area to stay in their second home, where my mom was a long-term house sitter at the time. Because they lived in the same house as my mom during these visits, our two families had gotten to know one another well and become friends, even though our worldviews were drastically different. We were a family of evangelical missionaries, studying at the Calvinistic Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. They were a family of staunchly liberal Harvard-educated progressives. But there was an openness to conversation, even friendship, with others who were different from them that set them apart from the more radical progressivism that is in vogue today.

This professor couple believed that as much as possible, nature should be allowed to take over the property, hence the overgrown pool from the 1960s, now full of lily pads, algae, frogs, and a snapping turtle. When the weather was warm, we liked to have cookouts on the cement patio next to this pool, and I would often invite my international friends. My mom’s creative cooking was a real treat for them, as well as for me, a college student at the time living on my own. We’d eat by the fire pit, swapping stories from all around the world until long after the lightning bugs had come out. A map on the wall contained pins from all of the different countries where my mom’s many guests had come from.

But swapping stories with refugees can get intense very quickly. The barbecue chicken wasn’t even done grilling when Farhad was dropping stories on Melissa of genocide and passionately espousing his seemingly-racist and Islamophobic opinions. She didn’t know what to do with it. Melissa was a sharp woman, and getting a world class education. But when your education and worldview is framed to believe that racism and oppression can only really be perpetrated by white Christians, by the oppressor class, what do you do with a Middle Eastern society where various people groups have hated and killed each other for thousands of years? What do you do with a brown-skinned Muslim who is eager to convince you of the evils of his own religion, and has first-hand accounts of genocide to back it up? Victims are supposed to be inherently virtuous, the oppressed are not supposed to be able to be racist. But Farhad was calling members of the dominant people group names like “dogs” and “filth.” He clearly hated them. All of them. Islam is supposed to be the misunderstood and maligned religion of peace, but Farhad was pointing to examples from recent history of massacres literally named after chapters of the Qur’an. Of Muslims with power slaughtering Muslims and other minority groups with less power.

Melissa caught her mom’s attention and tried to appeal to her. “But… but… mom… this can’t be right, can it?”

“No, honey, you’re right, it can’t be right, it’s, well, it’s…”

They were grasping, intellectually brilliant though they were. Their moral lenses had taught them that the world was full of people who were basically good, and evil only really exists in the oppressor class, or in those who just haven’t had enough education. But Farhad was a fly in that ointment, a big angry fly, prominently missing a tooth. His logic was strong. There was clear victimhood and suffering in his story. There was also clear darkness in his heart.

I turned the barbecue chicken legs over on the grill and thought about the scene before me. I thought about how adept Middle Eastern and Central Asian refugees are at messing with the categories of popular Western morality. I am amazed at how Iraqis, Iranians, and Afghans can say all kinds of politically-incorrect things and get away with it. What progressive Westerner is going to be so bold as to call them out and risk exposing themselves to accusations of racism or Islamophobia? Some still might, but many, like our friends, will find that they have instead stumbled upon some kind of loophole, some kind of short in the moral circuitry.

I also thought about how grateful I was to be able to live in the real world, the world I had learned from the Bible. In that world evil and darkness are not limited to the few, to the oppressor class. They exist in every human heart. We are all evil, we are all on the spectrum of darkness. So we are not surprised when it shows up in the poor and marginalized, just as it does among the wealthy and privileged. While God’s word is clear about the evils of true oppression, the Bible calls both both the oppressor and the oppressed to repent of their hatred (murder) in their hearts toward one another, and to become part of a new redeemed humanity together.

The Bible has a category for people like Farhad. It shocks him by calling him to love his enemies (Matt 5:44). And when he finds that impossible to do in his own strength, to repent and to cast himself on God’s mercy in Christ. And if he does this, then he will be given the Holy Spirit who will empower him for the first time to do the impossible – to love those who committed genocide against his people. He’ll be able to do this because God’s justice is coming, and because he will know that he was forgiven when he had committed even worse against God himself.

An Ivy league education is no match for the realities of Middle Eastern racism. But the Bible can handle it – yes, more than handle it. It can transform it.

*Names changed for security

Photo by Zhanhui Li on Unsplash

Timely Provision of an Unlikely Kind

Every parent knows of the dicey situations you might find yourself in when you’re away from home and your kid has a clothing crisis. Here I recall walking down the sidewalk in Queens, New York, carrying my one-and-a-half-year-old. It’s a freezing December evening, and she is swaddled up in her mom’s Middle Eastern scarf. But apart from that she’s only wearing a diaper. This is because she had an epic blowout while we were eating at a Turkish restaurant with a friend. And while we had an extra diaper, we did not have extra clothes. So after dinner, we shuffled back to the hotel as quickly as we could, hoping the meanface worn by most passersby was just typical New York, and not because our daughter’s bare chubby legs were sticking out into the winter wind.

I was helping change my youngest son into his pajamas the other day when I was reminded of yet another similar incident. While lending this bedtime assistance, I saw that my son was wearing a pair of blue briefs with a bright red, yellow, and green band. On the band is a repeated pattern of the word Wonderful and a black print of what is clearly a cannabis leaf.

“Hey love, we still have the marijuana undies?” I called to my wife down the hall.

“Yep! Hand-me-downs,” she replied, matter-of-factly.

These particular briefs had actually belonged to my son’s older sister, though this is no fault of her own. Well, not entirely.

At some point your kids start desiring to pack for themselves when the family goes on trips. This will eventually be a wonderful thing, I’m sure. But for a good number of years it introduces just as much trouble as any potential time it might save.

It was about a year ago that we found ourselves packing for a team retreat at a mountain lake town. Our previous team-building sessions with some new teammates had been sabotaged by local ministry crises, so we were going to try again, but this time we planned to get out of town to make the interruptions at least a little less likely. There’s almost no acceptable reason for not answering your phone in our local culture, but one of the few exceptions to this tyrannical rule is if you are out of the city. So, we packed up and drove an hour through the mountains to a nice lakeside hotel. We were all looking forward to a few days of encouragement, getting to know one another better, and some measure of rest. Even the biggest dust storm in decades didn’t dampen our spirits.

After the first evening of sessions, our family arrived back at our room. The plan was for each of the kids to get a quick shower before bed. Well, somewhere in the course of this process my wife discovered that our daughter had forgotten to pack any undergarments. In spite of her best packing intentions, our daughter had simply forgotten to pack any of this crucial form of clothing. My wife and I both deflated when my she told me the bad news. It was now 9 p.m. and neither of us wanted to head out into the dusty night to problem-solve this kind of issue at the end of a day of travel and meetings. We just wanted to get the kids in bed and get some rest ourselves.

But maybe, just maybe, some of the stores in the little tourist town’s bazaar would still be open and have something that could work. We decided I should try to go hunt down some children’s undergarments. If I found some, then I wouldn’t have to make the drive down to our city and back the next day and miss a half day of the retreat. We remembered passing a few women’s clothing stores as we drove through the bazaar, but it was a very small town with a marketplace that focused mostly on swimming and picnic supplies for tourists. I figured I had maybe a 50/50 chance of accomplishing my mission.

Girding up my loins, I drove down the mountain road to the little town and began weaving my car systematically through the streets of the small bazaar. Most of the stores were closed, with the exception of tea houses, shawarma shops, and alcohol stores. I had just about given up hope when I made it to the very last street. One narrow closet of a store remained to be checked.

Proclaiming my peace upon the store attendant, I entered and did a quick scan. Hair dryers, makeup, adult pajama sets, and other similar items filled the shelves from floor to ceiling. These were good signs. I tried to look casual as I made my way to the very back of the store. And there I spotted a thing of glory. A dusty bin on the floor full of a random assortment of kids briefs.

“There it is!” I said to my self in the local language, much more loudly than I had been meaning to. As other missionaries can attest, there is a special kind of victorious joy that floods one’s soul when the very item you have been searching for is suddenly found in the bowels of a foreign market. Providence cares for us in many ways, and these oh-so-practical provisions in unexpected places certainly count as one of them.

However, I soon I realized that the trick would be finding something the right size. Most of these undergarments were for apparently massive children and my daughter was a very skinny seven-year-old at the time. After I had picked through the entire dusty box, I found three pair that would have to do. One was neutral, and probably too big. Two seemed to be a better size. Of these two, one was clearly for girls, and illustrated with flowers and goofy Asian cartoon characters. Passable, I thought to myself. And the third pair, which was the one I was most confident would actually fit, was none other than the pair of boys’ Rastafarian-themed underwear which I have described above.

I squatted on the dirty tile floor of the shop considering the best path forward. Was I a bad dad for considering buying my child an undergarment emblazoned with cannabis leaves, self-proclaimed as Wonderful? However, since they might be the only ones that truly fit, the more practical side of me soon won out. Clean undies trump many things. I would get my daughter at least two pair that should fit, and if any uncomfortable questions are raised about the nature of said plant emblazoned on its band, we could always use it as a teachable moment. It’s never too early for a little Christian worldview formation, right?

Having made my decision, I couldn’t not spend a moment chewing on certain unanswerable questions. Who in their right mind had decided to design such a garment for kids? Why had their supervisor at the clothing factory approved this idea? What country and continent had this pair of briefs originally come from? Jamaica? And what kind of strange and Wonderful journey had brought them to this dusty bin in an obscure mountain town in Central Asia? Alas, there are no answers to questions such as these, so I rose, attempted to purchase them with a nonchalant demeanor, and stepped back out into the hazy night air.

Much relieved to have actually found something, I celebrated by buying myself a late night chicken shawarma sandwich (to be consumed immediately), and some Snickers bars (to be consumed in the hotel room). It may have been a needle in a haystack, but by the grace of God I had found something passable at the very last store I could have checked. Our children would be fully clothed. The team retreat was saved.

I definitely had to stifle a laugh the other day when I realized that these marijuana undies had made it all the way to America with us. The many adventures of the traveling cannabis underpants continue. Indeed, they are being put to good use as a hand-me-down for a missionary kid, so they have found a noble use in the end, despite their murky beginnings.

“What is real missionary life like?” many ask. Well, there are the days when you find someone divinely prepared to hear the gospel message. And those are good days. And then there are the days when all you can find is some cannabis-themed underwear for your kids when they’ve forgotten to pack any of their own. And those are good days too. Turns out the small graces of laughter and timely provision can be a mighty thing amidst the many ups and downs of missionary life.

No, I will not scoff at the timely gift of even these pagan underpants – but yes, I will laugh. And someday, when they’re old enough, I think our kids will too.

Photo by David Gabrić on Unsplash

*Just in case it isn’t clear, I would like to say that I do not support the recreational use of cannabis plant/marijuana for Christians or anyone. Though I hear it was used to make some decent parachutes during WWII.

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Donkeys, Fireballs, and Other Near-Death Experiences

Balaam wasn’t saved by an angel. He was saved from an angel. This reversal of the expected formula is made even stranger in that his repeated deliverer is a donkey – one who can not only see the invisible angel, but who can also speak. And Balaam, at least for his first two near-death experiences, was utterly ignorant of the fact that he was being delivered from death by means of his remarkable long-eared servant (Numbers 22).

This is so often the way it goes. Death misses us by a hair and we are completely unaware of it, or at least unaware of what was going on behind the scenes once we do realize the great danger we just escaped. Just the other day we found a copperhead coiled up at the bottom of a rock we had been climbing and sitting on. I and several of my kids had apparently stepped around and right over him, busy admiring the view beyond of a Virginia river valley, taking pictures and peering over the cliff edge, completely unaware that the far greater danger was coiled up at our toes.

What had directed our feet so that they never stepped on the poisonous snake? What had directed the snake so that he stayed still, opting for freezing rather than fighting? Had it all been normal providence, aligning our days and choices just so in order to turn a potentially deadly encounter into a merely interesting one? Or was there direct involvement in that moment, a little nudge to the four-year-old’s foot by an invisible protector here, a word of warning inaudibly spoken to the snake there? Traditional Christian culture has angels invisibly intervening for us on the regular, saving us from calamity just in the nick of time, and often without us ever being aware.

If such guardians do function in this way, perhaps one activity in eternity will be watching one another’s Your Many Near-Deaths: Greatest Hits compilations. I can see it now, chilling with Darius* and Reza* in my room in the Father’s house as we watch one particular nail-biting act of deliverance. They rise to their feet, hand on their heads, yelling, “Bro!!! That was so close! How did you not die?! Look at you, just sitting there, sipping your chai like a complete donkey!”

Occasionally we do realize that something was definitely amiss in a given near-scrape. Something potentially deadly has happened, yet we were rescued, unharmed, in a way that doesn’t completely make sense. People don’t act they way they normally would. Train schedules are inexplicably off. For some reason we make a choice that we would not typically make. Natural elements behave abnormally. Fireballs burn an arc around us yet leave us completely alone.

One year ago I almost blew myself up in our kitchen. I did manage to blow up the kitchen, especially the stove. But I escaped unscathed, with the exception of some jumpiness every time I lit a gas burner for the next six months.

It all went back to to the difficulty of staying warm during the worst part of our Central Asian winters. The nights up in our mountain area often go below freezing, and the government makes its most severe cuts to the electricity during this season also. Two winters ago also proved to be one of the coldest snaps in decades. Add to the cold and the lack of electricity a natural gas shortage as well. All this meant not enough electricity to heat water for showers, dwindling supplies of LPG for cooking and portable heating, and one very cold family who couldn’t stop coughing. As a dad, I decided that it was time to pursue the nuclear option, something I had been chewing on for many a cold Central Asian winter.

With the help of a partner church, we purchased a 3,000 liter LPG tank for our roof and got a gas-powered water heater, a couple of LPG fireplace-type heaters, and all the necessary piping installed. This would mean that even if we had no electricity for days on end, we would have constant hot water, heating for at least two rooms during the day, and gas for cooking and hot drinks. The local workmen who installed all of this for us in the worst part of winter were great guys, and they even showed me what to do if the huge tank ever ran out. Conveniently, I could attach one of our smaller fifteen liter tanks to the gas lines and – voila – have gas in the lines until I could get the big one refilled. But, they stressed, it’s not good to let the tank completely empty. Refill it at twenty percent.

Well, Central Asia being what it is, the next few months were full of lots of ministry drama and various crises, and the big gas tank on our roof ran out without me noticing. It was late at night when this happened. My kids were already asleep and my wife was reading in our bedroom. I recalled what the workmen had told me several months before about how to temporarily refill the gas lines. So I went out back, attached a hose and nozzle to one of our small grill-style LPG tanks, and hooked it up to the house gas lines. But before I turned it on I made sure all the gas appliances were shut off. The gas nozzle I was using was one I was less familiar with, the kind that twisted open rather than a simple on/off lever. Figuring I needed to fill up many meters of lines for this to work, I turned the nozzle as far open as it could go, and heard a loud hiss as the gas rushed into the lines. So far, so good.

But as soon as I walked back inside I knew that something was not right. Another hissing sound was coming from the kitchen. I ran into the kitchen and could tell that gas was rushing out of the front right burner of the stove. I was confused. The burner was not on. But I figured that I’d better make sure. I made a panicky attempt to turn the burners off, forgetting that this stove had an electric lighter function. And in trying to make sure the burner was off, I accidentally triggered the lighter function. That’s when it happened.

A fireball filled the kitchen. Warm air wrapped around me, a shock wave hit my eardrums and rocked me backward, and the entire house shook. When this had passed I saw that the stove was on fire. What had been the front right burner area was now a geyser of flame, smoke, and melting plastic. Somehow I had the presence of mind to run outside and shut off the valve connecting the small LPG tank the the lines.

I ran back inside and was intercepted by my wife who has just run into the kitchen, wide-eyed. She thought our city was being bombed. I must have mumbled some kind of explanation to her that no, it was me. No enemies or terrorists bombing. I had managed to bomb the kitchen.

The next most important thing was to shut off the valve from the pipes to the stove and to grab the fire extinguisher. Both of these were back against the wall, right next to the side of the stove that was on fire. Not the best place for a fire extinguisher, I thought to myself as I strategized how to safely get past the flames. I managed to do it by draping a dish cloth over my head, ducking past the flaming corner, and shutting off the gas line. I also grabbed the fire extinguisher while I was down there and soon the stove and most of the kitchen was covered in a fine grey dust.

My wife went and grabbed the vacuum while I stood there, shocked and surveying the damage. What had gone wrong? Did I turn up the pressure too high on the unfamiliar nozzle? Did some kind of safety mechanism in the stove break, allowing gas to rush out when the burner wasn’t on? This was when I figured out that it was me who had lit the fireball by means of the lighter function in my haste to make sure the burners were actually off.

“Do I still have my eyebrows?” I asked my wife as she walked back in. I was very surprised when she answered in the affirmative. I had learned from friends in Melanesia that when facing down a fireball, the eyebrows usually don’t make it. I looked down for the first time at the hair on my arm and hands. Not singed at all. My clothes weren’t either. Wait, the tips of my thermal socks were crispy. And all around me, a semicircle was melted into the grey kitchen carpet. Other parts of the kitchen also evidenced contact with the explosion. Strangely, the exposed part of the trash bag had reversed itself, wrapping itself up tight around the lid of the bin when it had previously been wrapped over the sides.

We spent the next hour or so cleaning up all the extinguisher dust, and marveling that nothing worse had happened. What accounted for the fact that I was almost untouched by the giant fireball? Why had the carpet all around me melted while even my hair had gone unsinged? Was I protected by the normal flow of providence, or had there been some kind of abnormal intervention which stood between me and the flames? Is that even a valid distinction to make?

It’s unlikely I’ll ever know the answers to these questions in this life. “The secret things belong to the Lord,” as it says in Deuteronomy 29:29. And included in those secret things are many of the workings of providence in both our tragedies and our deliverances. No, unlike Balaam, ours is not usually to see behind the curtain when it comes to our close calls, but to learn from them and to be grateful for them. There’s wisdom there – like how not to nearly blow yourself up next time your LPG tank is empty. And gratitude – like prayers of thanks for the only real loss being a melted stove, and for the surprising bonus of not even one melted eyebrow.

Balaam was saved from an angel by a donkey. Could I have been saved by an angel from the consequences of being a donkey? Perhaps. A few more seconds of that gas rushing out and it could have been a much bigger bomb. But however it went down in the invisible realm, I am thankful for God’s kindness to me when I almost blew myself up a year ago. As I am thankful for his protection this week with the copperhead – and for all those other times that I don’t even know about, included on my tape of Your Many Near Deaths: Greatest Hits.

*Names changed for security

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

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