Friday, July 31, 2015

Missionary serendipity: "A little country overrun by the English!"

Reading the life of James O. Fraser, missionary to the Lisu people in the early part of the 20th century, and this vignette caused a smile -- serendipitous sovereignty and divine humor!

One day Dan was escorting Anna when a young Chinese officer arrogantly accosted them. Were they English?

“I’m from Denmark,” Anna replied. “Where’s that?” “It’s a little country over-run by the Nazis.” “And you?” turning to Dan, “where are you from?” “My family came from Scotland,” said Dan. “Where’s that?” “It’s a little country over-run by the English.”

“So! We are all oppressed peoples,” the man said. “Come and eat with me.”

Big smile.

Amazing to trace the hand of God in little things, including humorous (and often unnoticed) twists and turns!

Selah.

Note: As told by Eileen Crossman, daughter of James and Roxie Fraser, in the book Mountain Rain.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

God builds fair things from our tears

The Lord is slow to anger but great in power; the Lord will certainly not allow the wicked to go unpunished. He marches out in the whirlwind and the raging storm; dark storm clouds billow like dust under his feet. — Nah. 1:3 NET

by Henry Ward Beecher

I recollect, when a lad, and while attending a classical institute in the vicinity of Mount Pleasant, sitting on an elevation of that mountain, and watching a storm as it came up the valley. The heavens were filled with blackness, and the earth was shaken by the voice of thunder. It seemed as though that fair landscape was utterly changed, and its beauty gone never to return.

But the storm swept on, and passed out of the valley; and if I had sat in the same place on the following day, and said, “Where is that terrible storm, with all its terrible blackness?” the grass would have said, “Part of it is in me,” and the daisy would have said, “Part of it is in me,” and the fruits and flowers and everything that grows out of the ground would have said, “Part of the storm is incandescent in me.”

Have you asked to be made like your Lord? Have you longed for the fruit of the Spirit, and have you prayed for sweetness and gentleness and love? Then fear not the stormy tempest that is at this moment sweeping through your life. A blessing is in the storm, and there will be the rich fruitage in the “afterward.”

Selah.

The flowers live by the tears that fall
From the sad face of the skies;
And life would have no joys at all,
Were there no watery eyes.
Love thou thy sorrow: grief shall bring
Its own excuse in after years;
The rainbow!—see how fair a thing
God hath built up from tears.

— Henry S. Sutton