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The Cowboy’s Coming

You have not heard from me for months. There’s a reason for that. A couple of reasons, actually.

I’ve been pastoring. And grandfathering. And marketing that modern cowboy novel—Someplace North, Someplace Wild—that launched this web page.

I believe we’re in the final stretch. Four publishers have requested the entire manuscript. Somebody’s going to say yes.

So stand by for an update in about a month.

Meantime, this lady and I will celebrate our 50th anniversary June 8! Here’s a picture we took recently on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago, at the very spot I sealed our engagement with a diamond ring.

Yes, she has hung in there with me all these years!

Praise be to God.

Gary

 

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Of Cancer, Pharaohs and Horses

This page has laid dormant too long; it’s time to wake a sleeping blog. And a new adventure is the perfect moment to do just that.

Tomorrow I’m scheduled for the first of 38 radiation treatments for prostate cancer left over after I surrendered the gland itself to a surgeon in July 2020.

Two years ago a blood test reported my PSA number at 24, six times greater than the upper limit of 4. As I recall, my wife and I stopped whatever we were doing and looked at each other. For maybe a half hour, a mist of fear washed over me. When I quickly reviewed my PSA history, it showed two years without testing. Now we knew it was aggressively growing during that time. (Brothers, get a PSA reading every year!)

My fear morphed to a few minutes of anger toward my doctor. But the anger dissolved when I remembered my theology: God holds us responsible to care for our bodies, never mind the doctor. A 66-year-old man of average intelligence has no excuse to allow two years to pass without such an important test.

As for the fear, it was soon gone as well. I asked myself, what’s the worst that could happen? An early promotion to glory! My family would miss me, especially my bride, but they would survive and move on. For the time being, death is part of life … but a day is coming!

Besides, as a friend reminded me the other day, if you’re going to have a cancer, the prostate variety is not so bad. My doc estimates an 85 percent probability of disease control for five years at least.

My horse ran away

In these early ruminatings I remembered a story I have retold many times and preached more than once.

A man in a village had a prized horse. One morning he got up and the horse was gone. Lord, why did you let my horse run away? But a few days later, the horse returned with ten more. Ah, thank you, Lord, now I have eleven horses! The man’s son started breaking the horses to ride when one kicked the son and broke his leg. Oh Lord, why did you let that horse break my son’s leg? Sometime later, a gang of thugs came through the village forcibly taking every able-bodied young man. They grabbed this son, then saw his broken leg and released him. Ah, thank you, Lord, you saved my son!

When we suffer (as I had declared from the pulpit), when we grieve, we need to remember God’s meticulous providence. He brings good from suffering, beauty from ashes, joy from grief.

I peered at the towering PSA result and recalled my repeated retelling of that story. It was as if God were saying to me, You love to preach it, let’s see how well you live it! And that made me laugh at myself. Still does.

Something is lurking

The elevated PSA—the doctor called it aggressive cancer—led to months of tests and scans, virtual meetings with multiple doctors, and a radical prostatectomy 19 months ago. The post-op pathology confirmed what the doc suspected: the cancer had escaped the gland and some unknown amount still lurked, probably in the prostate bed, as he called it.

They injected a hormone to put the cancer to sleep for a few months, and tomorrow I will lay down for about 15 minutes while an invisible, carefully targeted radiation beam attempts to destroy those nasty yet invisible cancer cells. And the same the next day, etc. … five days every week for seven and a half weeks.

Like cancer like Pharaoh

Recently I had a new thought about all this, an intriguing biblical lens through which to view it. It occurred to me, in a season of prayer, that cancer and Pharaoh have some things in common.

The Pharaoh of Exodus was a ruthless, godless king, a cruel tyrant who brought suffering to God’s people. How could such a thing happen? Who made that possible?

God himself, as we see from His own testimony: But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth (Exo 9:16 ESV). God established Pharaoh, who brought cruel suffering to God’s people, so that He might receive glory, climaxed in an epic rescue at the Red Sea just as all hope was lost. Thousands of years later millions still marvel at that miracle.

Cancer is like Pharaoh, something God raises up for His own glory, sometimes a cruel tyrant who brings suffering to a Jesus follower. For what purpose? That God might receive glory! That He who is worthy might be honored in the suffering of a faithful servant and, on a day to come, might destroy that enemy, as He did Pharaoh, and liberate His servant with a deliverance far beyond his wildest dreams!

After all, what’s at stake when you have cancer? What if that cancer doesn’t go away? Try this: Your life is not about you, it’s about God. It’s always about God. If the cancer patient is gloriously healed, praises rise to God. If, on the other hand, the cancer lingers, or even progresses to the taking of a life, praises rise to God, especially if that cancer patient is clear about the fundamental view of life: it’s about God and his glory, and He will see to my need in the very best way.

Just asking the loan of your body

Years ago I had the opportunity to meet someone who had learned this at a much deeper level, Dr. Helen Roseveare, a British missionary to Africa.

On the night she prayed to receive Christ, Helen’s pastor said, Maybe one day God will offer you the privilege of sharing in some part of His sufferings. She never forgot that.

Helen went to the Congo, in the heart of Africa, in 1953. In the 60s the Congo went through the violent Simba rebellion. Many foreign missionaries left, but she stayed and paid a terrible price. Helen was the first white woman to be taken captive by the Simbas.

All that you can imagine happened to me, she told me. One example, I lost my back teeth to the boot of a soldier. Throughout all that horrible abuse, she experienced two realities.

On the one hand, the terror and pain were real. But at the same time, she was sustained by a sense of Christ speaking: I want to trust you with this. This is not your suffering; it’s Mine. I just ask the loan of your body for a time.

Cancer is not persecution, but it is a God-ordained suffering which can redound to his glory.

I don’t know that I will experience suffering at a significant level. Neither do you. But if we do, when we do, when anything bad happens, we can respond, in a spirit of expectancy, Oh, Lord, my horse ran away! Now what?

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Stuck in 2020

My wife and I recently read Rocket Men: the daring odyssey of Apollo 8 and the astronauts who made man’s first journey to the moon, by Robert Kurson.  (Thanks, Mark Moffat, for the tip!)

Page 282 describes the astronauts, on their way home, crossing the point “at which Earth’s gravity [becomes] dominant.” From there the spaceship gradually accelerated until, days later, entering the earth’s atmosphere, they topped out at 24,500 mph.

“But that was a long way off,” Kurson writes, “and for now, when the crew looked out their windows, with no landmarks in sight, they seemed to be standing still.” That was an illusion. They were not motionless, they were flying at 5,720 mph.

“A good metaphor for life,” my wife said when she came to that page. Sometimes it feels like you’re stuck when you’re actually flying. Maybe you’ve had seasons like that.

Baby bird from America

In 1993, I spent two weeks in Ukraine teaching Cross-Cultural Communication of the Gospel at Donetsk Christian University, invited by Dr. Ray Prigodich, DCU academic dean at the time. It was my first overseas trip—after fifteen years as a missionary long overdue—and full of wonder and worry: the wonder of a foreign culture, the worry of a new assignment. My classroom skills were limited, my experience even less.

Sixty students from various parts of the former Soviet Union studied at DCU, preparing for ministry in some part of the Slavic world. I had spent many hours writing curriculum for ten days of class. My arrival coincided with the Sunday morning service on campus, followed by some time to rest. But Monday morning, and the first class session, was soon upon me. Like a baby robin contemplating gravity from the nest, I stepped off the edge and furiously flapped my lecturer wings, hoping not to crash.

And actually, it wasn’t so bad … at first. Class all morning, and prep in the afternoon. Two competent interpreters swapped off sessions. The students engaged in the class discussions and one-on-one with me during breaks.

As with many test flights, this one started with a lift and gradually glided earthward. By the end of the first week, my pinions hung a little ragged. Felt pretty much grounded. The initial enthusiasm waned, and by the last couple of days I was consoling myself: “You did not meet your expectations, and surely disappointed the students, but you did your best.”

Surprise awaited

With that self solace I came to the last day, determined to stick the thing out with a brave face, finish with what strength I could muster. That afternoon I would fly to Kiev and be driven to Rovno, a city in western Ukraine, to spend the weekend with national church leaders before departing for Oregon and home.

But, on that last day of class, I was in for a surprise.

As I wrapped up a little before noon, a student asked for the floor. Speaking for the group, he said they wanted me to know how much they had appreciated their time with me. They had found encouragement in my smile and friendly manner, learned from the material. Other warm remarks followed, words I have since forgotten.

They gifted me with a painting one of the young ladies had completed during those two weeks, a garden scene in oil. On the back, in neat Cyrillic, someone had written, “With fond memories to the dear professor from the students of the Bible College, 3/11/93.” In the group picture I’m holding the painting. “The Garden” hangs in our home, and twenty-seven years later the memory warms me.

I thought about this when my wife recognized the metaphor in the Apollo 8 story, three lunar explorers feeling motionless while traveling seven times the speed of sound. Rocket men, them; me, a little bird. Different leagues, but neither felt movement.

But One is always working

Such has ever been the human story. Abraham waited twenty-five years on God’s promise of offspring with no indication anything was happening.

Joseph thought he was stuck in Pharaoh’s prison but found out otherwise.

And how about Moses’ forty years in the desert, the very definition of high and dry? But God was moving things along at exactly the right speed.

Humans were born to produce, to see progress. That those rocket men could endure hours, maybe days, without any sensation of motion testifies to the stuff of which such voyagers are made. Most of us have far lower thresholds of discipline.

Stuckness … and that’s one way to describe 2020 … wears on the soul. We ache for light, motion, progress, some assurance of the dawn. And our soul’s Mover and Shaker whispers, “Take courage, you are not abandoned.”

“He does not withhold His grace from those who earnestly ask for it,” Brother Lawrence wrote in 1691. “Knock on His door, and keep on knocking and I assure you that if you are not discouraged, He will open it in His own good time and give you all at once what He has withheld for years.”

Imagine that.

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The Intrepid Student and the First Englishman

The pandemic has resurfaced to my view an unlikely life, someone I met in North India 25 years ago.

India’s sights, sounds and smells overwhelm a first-time visitor from the West. On my initial trip, 1995, everywhere I looked riveted my attention, especially the sheer numbers of people—children, women and men in south Asian dress doing interesting things.

Cars, buses, trucks, human-powered rickshaws, scooters, oxen-drawn wagons, bicycles … a tangle of vehicles snarled the roadway as pedestrians darted through the gaps with care. Trucks bore strange signs at the back: “Honk, please.” Pairs of laborers stood on rickety, ascending platforms passing cement-loaded trays up three stories of a construction project. Cattle tethered on short leashes languished beside tiny homes lining narrow, dusty streets.

Of course India boasts lots of world-class tourist sites, especially the Taj Mahal, and a list of lesser-known Mughal architectural wonders including the Red Fort and Fatehpur Sikri, all splendid, enchanting, spectacular.

But the people, the God-image bearers, made the deepest impression. One, especially.

My agency had sent me to observe a church-leadership training seminar, a three-day affair hosted by Baring Union Christian College in Batala, Punjab, a city of over 100,000. The teaching was conducted in Hindi, one of India’s 14 official languages, 13 of which I spoke equally well (which is to say, except for English, not at all).

One can abide incomprehensible speech only so long before restlessness overcomes patience, and so it was, a couple of hours into the session, that I slipped outside for a look around. And because I did, my life is richer 25 years later.

Swept up in a crowd

Following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Ghandi by Sikhs in 1985, Punjab state, home of the Sikhs, had been closed to foreign travel until a few years before my visit. A Westerner was a rare commodity in Batala in 1995. I didn’t know this; it might have prepared me for what was about to happen.

I walked a few steps from the seminar room and came to a ten-acre lawn dotted with clusters of students segregated by sex; groups of guys, bunches of girls. I greeted someone and a throng of young men quickly formed around me, pressed in on me. From where have you come? What is it like in America? What are you thinking about India? Other questions followed, some not suitable to publish but unsurprising considering that young men everywhere are interested in “the way of a man with a maid,” as Agur put it, and perceive Americans as experts in such matters.

Any opportunity for meaningful conversation quickly dissolved as I started to answer a question only to be interrupted by another shouted from the edges of the crowd as additional students joined the fray. It occurred to me what Mark the gospeler meant, “Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter.” It was a rush, but wanting to avoid a spectacle, I had started moving away, when one young man stepped up with a direct request. Could I meet with him later to talk? We agreed on a time and place, and I returned to the seminar.

One courageous invitation

At the appointed time I found the rooftop of a three-story building where my supplicant, Ashwani, and two friends waited. “Will you come to my village?” he immediately asked.

“How far is it?” I envisioned a journey my schedule would not allow, but he assured me a twenty-minute rickshaw ride would get us there. I secured permission from my host and it was set. We left the campus by bicycle rickshaw, stopped to meet his father selling shoes by the road, and again to have tea with his friend minding a wedding-supply shop, before arriving at an agricultural hamlet on the edge of the city.

Children encircled us as we walked into the community along the narrow street between houses. One young man took my hand to walk beside me. I was perplexed by the energy and celebratory spirit. Ashwani saw that on my countenance. “You must understand, sir. You are the first Englishman to visit my village.”

Ashwani’s neighbors blessed him for his initiative to deliver joy to an ordinary day. As for the “Englishman,” he was having an out-of-body experience. Every household fed me. Ashwani offered milk, a food I had been warned to avoid, but it arrived in a gleaming stainless steel tumbler, sweet and pure and delicious. These rural villagers on the outskirts of Batala provided astonishing hospitality to a stranger. To recount it in detail would overrun my readers’ patience, perhaps.

Okay, one detail. I had just finished telling the story of David and Goliath to the assembled children when Ashwani quietly inquired, “Sir, would you like a comb? Your hairs are scattered!” I still smile at that memory, but the fact is, he cared about my dignity enough to risk my disapproval. Only selfless love overcomes fear of rejection.

God uses unlikely people

Good deeds often come from unlikely sources. Seven thousand miles and 25 years have not erased the impact of that day (and the next, when Ashwani approached me on the campus begging me to return, “Those who did not see you are considered unlucky.”) All this wonder, both for the hamlet and the visitor, was made possible by a student’s courage to approach a foreigner on behalf of his community, a stranger whose only meaningful credential was his place of birth.

And after I returned home, Ashwani wrote me repeatedly, even spent precious rupees to call me on several occasions. Sometimes, when he couldn’t muster enough cash to call, he would dial my number and hang up after one ring, somehow reassured by the mental image of his “Englishman” friend on the other side of the world holding a phone and thinking about him, and his village beside Batala.

Over the intervening years, the calls and cards diminished and almost stopped. Time and responsibilities intervened. Ashwani graduated, got a teaching job, married, sired two children.

But in September 2001, when the towers fell three thousand miles from me, he called to be sure I was okay.

And earlier this month, Ashwani phoned to check on my welfare in the pandemic. From his native land, where day laborers are starving in the Covid storm, he reached across the Pacific once again to be sure I was okay.

When we think we’re too small and insignificant to be of much use, we need to remember Ashwani. He scorned intimidation and risked rejection to extend himself into the life of another, and a little bit of history was created as a result.

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