Choose Your Heroes Well

The river led us up into the Star Mountains

My boots were new, shiny and above all, dry. They recoiled at the sight of the massive mudhole that materialized out of the shadows on the trail ahead.  Rats.  But wait, this might be doable.  I gingerly placed my steps on the few rocks that poked out of the muck .  Bram sloshed up from behind, laughing.  “Give it up Nate.  You’re going to spend the rest of the day with your feet in the water!” he said, happily plowing a wake through the mud.

Bram speaks truth.  He's done this particular trek through the jungle countless times.  The vast majority of the next five and a half hours of walking were spent with our feet in a pristine jungle river that flows swiftly out of the Star Mountains.  We crossed the torrent so many times I lost track.  Each time two sure footed Papuans unobtrusively placed themselves on either side of me, waiting for me to fall.  I didn't disappoint them.  My only source of pride was that, by swiftly sticking my arm straight up in the air, I always managed to keep my camera out of the water.

This was on the trail...not in the river.

For the last hour of the hike we split off from the main river, but our soggy feet found no reprieve as we followed a smaller stream through a deep gorge.  Finally we left the wet behind and began climbing a steep mountain wall.  Emerging at the top of the bluff, we saw what we had come to see: a 1000 foot stretch of ground that immense toil had hacked out of the mountain. The rough shape of an airstrip.  As I pulled out my clinometer to measure the slope, Bram crested the cliff and stood beside me.

“Let’s pray, Bram.  If the slope here is greater than 15%, this won’t work as an airstrip and the people’s incredible labor will have been for nothing.”  We talked to God for a moment.  I feared the worst as I sighted the top of the airstrip through the clinometer.  I showed the reading to Bram.  14%.  He literally jumped up and down, shouting his joy.

The little airstrip that could.

To ensure that our feet wouldn't dry out, it began to rain.  We trudged up the slope of the airstrip to the shelter of the lone hut where we would spend the night.  An old man hobbled down the airstrip towards us.  We met halfway and he embraced me, weeping.  His name was Paulus.  As we stood there in the rain, others surrounded us and they told me his story.

An honor.

In 1977, Paulus set his people free.  His people had never known anything but a fearful world controlled by powerful evil spirits and full of murderous enemies.  That year an entire village had been wiped out by a neighboring tribe.  But in that same fateful year, Paulus and others heard of some very strange happenings several valleys to the south.  Intent on seeing for himself, he left his area and hiked south through the mountains until he encountered a missionary who told of an almost-too-good-to-be-true path to relationship with the Creator.  Somewhere in his soul, Paulus knew what he was hearing was true.  He stayed on in that foreign valley for some time, continuing to learn about this new path.  Eventually he attended a newly formed Bible school there.  He then hiked back to his area, bringing this good news with him.  Paulus spent much of the rest of his life faithfully trekking throughout a wide area of mountains, rivers and thick jungle, bringing this message that brought peace with God, peace with enemies and freedom from the tyranny of the spirits.  “He’s the one who brought the Gospel to us,” the people told me.

“And now,” he said to me through his tears, “I am old.  But before I die I have one last prayer and that is that my home village, the most isolated of this area, would finally have an airstrip.”

I turned to my colleague Tim who was now standing beside us.  “Here is a real missionary if there ever was one.  Some day we’ll meet him again, and I think he’ll be standing in a place of honor, next to the other Apostle named Paul.”

Choosing one’s heroes is dicey, but I don’t hesitate to call a guy a hero who has served God in complete anonymity in one of the harshest, most remote environments on the planet, eking out a living from his gardens and trekking weeks to bring peace and freedom to his enemies.

Then there’s Bram.  He comes from a Christian family 2000 miles away on the island of Java.  He felt God clearly call him to serve as a missionary in Papua.  His family wouldn’t hear of it.  Even his church told him not to go.  So with no backing and $200 in his pocket, he left everything he knew behind for Papua, and hiked into this remote area to love these people and teach them more about the God Paulus had introduced them to.

“Mathew 6:33 is true, Nate.  Four years later I still have that $200 in my pocket.  God has provided for all my needs as I’ve served him out here.”

Bram and Paulus.

Bram is the answer to Paulus’ prayers and, humanly speaking, he’s the reason that these people will get an airstrip.  During our three days together in the jungle, I can tell that the love between Bram and the people of these mountains is mutual and genuine.





When I left my home country, my family, my church and a host of friends were solidly behind me.  Bram left with his church telling him he was doing the wrong thing, with his family hoping he’d soon run out of money and be forced to return home.  Comparing ourselves to others is a generally unhealthy sport, but I can’t help but be humbled by the contact I have with missionaries like Bram and Paulus.

That night I didn’t sleep a wink, and it wasn’t due to the cockroaches crawling all over me (“Don’t worry,” says Bram, “if they crawl in your ears, I’ve figured out how to get them out.  I shine a flashlight in there and they crawl out towards the light.”)  The cockroaches, while unnerving, are a quiet lot.  The people of this mountain are quite another matter. They are so excited by the news that the airstrip site will work that they dance all night.

All night.

Right outside the hut.

Swapping Addictions

Interesting little paragraph in John's twelfth chapter.  Apparently, even some of the Jewish elite were overcome by the evidence and believed that Jesus was the Son of God.  They got their feet through the door, then those feet got cold and they beat a hasty retreat to the known and the comfortable.  John tells us that they knew that following Jesus would cost them their synagogue cards so they kept quiet.

...for they loved praise from men more than praise from God.

Praise from men.  We are absolutely addicted to it.  And like good junkies, we want our friends to be addicts too.  When we find someone who in earnest doesn't care what the elite think of him, well...just one thing to do: rally the mobs and crucify him.

Praise from men.  Its tentacles are so deeply wrapped around our souls I don't think that any of us can see how insidiously our motivations for doing the right things are corrupted by our heart's addiction to the praise of men.  Why do we work so hard to prepare a great sermon?  Why do we help the little old lady?  Why do we lead worship?  Why do we give to the poor?  Why do we avoid external sin?  Why do I write these blogs?  I'm afraid of the answers to those questions...but I know that for myself, too many times the praise of men, at least in part, fuels my actions.

But hang on a second.  There's something else here.  John's words hold hidden treasure.  These men loved the praise of men more than praise from God.

Praise from God?  Is that possible?  Can we even dream that the God who created the universe might find occasion to be pleased with us?  Can we go there?  What if we dared?

In daring, I find hope for my wandering heart and a breathtaking source of strength for obedience.

It seems that John would be telling us not only that praise from God is possible, but that we should love it.  Pursue it.  Crave it.  Now here is something that can fuel a passion to follow Jesus even at great personal cost.  The thought that by submitting to the Spirit of God, following where He leads, I can hear Him say well done! ... this is nothing short of life-changing.

And, it might even be the way out of the praise of men addiction.

Skipping The Coronation

(My apologies for the prolonged absence from the blog...I do this in my spare time with my leftover energy, both of which have been in short supply of late.)

--------------------

Meandering through the riches of the Gospel of John.  Chapter six of John's story relates two of Jesus' most famous miracles.  First, he feeds a whole mess of people with a couple of fish and a few pieces of bread.  Then, he walks on water.  Some folks who experienced these amazing events firsthand are convinced that Jesus truly is the Son of God (and later, Jesus tears into others for seeing these miracles and not believing).  Sandwiched between these two never-to-be-forgotten miracles, we have a bland little sentence which, after a bit of reflection, strikes me as not so bland:

Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, 

withdrew again to a mountain by himself.

They're going to make him king, and he'll have none of it.  In the prologue to the film, The Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien's words are paraphrased as follows:

Nine rings were given to the race of men, who above all else desire power.  

Jesus, by this time was a very public figure.  Public figures, at least those from the race of men, do not walk away from being made king.

Multiplying food and walking on liquid convinced some that Jesus was not purely from the race of men, that he was indeed God with us.  Having the laws of nature bend to his whim is proof positive of Jesus' deity...but so is this stunning display of incorruptibility.

I wonder how many humble and passionate followers of Jesus have wandered from the narrow way when the crowd has made them king.  For those of us involved full time in Christian work the almost absolute rule is to say yes to any and every opportunity for upward mobility.  Our Master's example ought to at least make us pause...and maybe even occasionally slip away and skip the coronation.

Green Arm Bands and The Words of Job

I wanted to post a pic of the wicked-cool scar
but it probably wouldn't get past the censors.

Some of you know that I've been in a hospital in Singapore since Tuesday letting the docs give me a wicked-cool scar across my neck...all in the name of taking out my wayward thyroid.  The troublesome organ had a tumor and some other growths in it and it was just time to kick it out of the house.

They band you up in these places like a migrating waterfowl.  The white one reminds my anesthetized mind who I am.  I forget what the orange one is.  The green one classifies me as a "high fall risk".  Translated into real terms, this means you're not allowed to go to the bathroom by yourself because they think the drugs they've given you, so that you will feel no pain, may make you keel over and bump your head...thus causing you some pain.  But what are we worried about?  You're full of narcotics so it wouldn't hurt, right?


High fall risk.

Isn't life simply one extended high fall risk?  We're all standing on the cliff of eternity...we just don't sense it most of the time.

After a couple days of waiting for results, the surgeon just came by to let me know that the biopsy on the tumor was clear.

I guess I had been preparing myself for whatever road the Lord wanted to take us down...but I really, really didn't have any desire to veer down the cancer road at this point in life.

I have no idea how I'd have reacted if the news had gone the other way...but all day I've been chewing on the words of Job:

Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.

What a thought.  This world is not my home...just passing through in the arms of Jesus...if he takes me now, so be it...you want me to question his judgment?  What peace there is in not having your roots down in this transient place.

Praise

Reading in the Gospel of John these days.  This morning I came across the following laser sharp words that Jesus directed at the religious establishment of his day:

...you accept praise from one another, 

yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?

When I consider the different groups of people that Jesus engaged and I try to figure out which group I would fit into, I'd really like to hope that I'd fit into the 'disciple' group, but I have a fear that drives me to conviction and watchfulness that I'm on the edge of falling into the 'religious establishment' group.  Two thousand years ago, Jesus spoke those brutally loving words to the guys who had the most to lose.... and I can easily imagine him speaking them to those of us entrenched in organized Christianity today.

We commend each other heartily and are delighted when our peers think we're cutting edge, latest-thinking, missional people of ministry.  But how often do we actually set policy, shape vision and apply resources with the specific goal of hearing God say "well done!" ?

Guilty as charged.  And again grateful for the powerful, penetrating, life-changing Word.

Impostors

I rarely learn anything of lasting value from success.

Not that success isn't an accomplished teacher, it's simply that she generally teaches me the wrong things.  Victor Hugo wrote these profoundly insightful words:

Success is a very hideous thing.

Its false resemblance to merit deceives men.

Unfortunately, when I sit in the classroom of success, I'm quick to learn and easily deceived.  After meeting with success in an endeavor, behind a humble face, my prideful heart learns the wrong things:

• So, I am something special after all...at least, this finally proves that I'm better than that guy over there.  

• I'll betcha I can pull this off again.  This time, since I now know what I'm doing, let's skip the whole prayer part.    

• People are giving me credit for this success...they can't all be idiots, maybe it really was me that has made this happen.

• This success kind of rebalances things for me, right?  I don't really need to keep seeking God's help in those weak areas of my life...success covers a multitude of sins.

• Wow, is applause ever underrated!  Who knew?  I could get used to this.  Let's see, what could I do to top that last one?

Spiritually, I've learned far more from my failures than from my successes.  Defeat tends to keep me humble, teachable, broken and dependent on my Creator.  In the past, I've told guys I've been mentoring that spiritually, success is your enemy, defeat is your friend.

There's a lot of truth in that...we need not be terrified of defeat and we need to be extraordinarily wary when we meet with success.  Recently, though, I've been thinking a lot about the fact that I can also learn the wrong things from failure.  Kipling famously wrote in his poem If:

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same...

...Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it

Defeat is also an impostor, and we can learn the wrong thing from him.

For one, defeat does not necessarily mean you are on the wrong path.  It could mean that you are smack in the center of the path that God wants you on.  Neither does meeting with failure mean that God is displeased with you.  It could mean that he didn't avert the current disaster precisely because he so delights in you he's given you the gift of a failure to keep you close to him...to keep you from wandering off like I do when I encounter that other impostor named Success.

The Gift

Coming back to Papua this time, after losing Paul four short months ago, was completely different than the other times we've returned to this place after being gone a while.  I found myself wondering if I’d still have the joy that I’d had in the past, if fear would gain a foothold, and what would the team would be like without Paul's always-smiling, encouraging spirit. 

Always great to see Piato...
this time sporting a utilitarian nose piece

God, in His mercy, didn't make me wait long for answers.  My first flight back in Papua was a pure gift.  Another of our pilots, Mark Hoving, was given the task of flying with me to knock off eight months of accumulated rust from my flying skills.  We set out from Sentani in the early morning with four passengers.  Our first stop was the village of Dofu, a red dirt hillock sticking out of the vast swamp two hundred miles to our west.  There, we dropped off two of our passengers: Jerrett and Courtney, two pilots from our team who were going to hop in a canoe and head downriver to the village of Wahuka to help Isolde, a fifty-something German widow-turned-missionary to the Kiri-Kiri people.   

After bidding the guys a safe trip, Mark and I piled back into the airplane with our two remaining passengers.  Steve and Carolyn Crockett are returning to the Moi tribe in the X-Ray valley to teach the Moi believers the newly translated book of 1 Corinthians.  Steve tells me the timing is perfect: the young Moi church is facing many of the same issues that faced the first century church in Corinth. 

On the ground in Daboto there's a warm reunion with Piato and the rest of the Moi.  Among the crowd at the airplane are two patients.  One, a pregnant woman who can barely walk, is doubled over in pain.  Another is a young boy whose urine looks like pure blood (most likely a complication of malaria called blackwater fever).  We fly these two to the coastal town of Nabire for medical help.  Within the week, I’ve received word that they are both doing much better.

While refueling in Nabire, we meet up with the next leg of today's mission: a team of Papuan pastors and a load of their supplies—they are heading to Dofu.  As we review our pre-start checklists we hear the guys quietly praying in the back.  These humble pastors made a trip last year to the Dofu area and upon witnessing the destitute conditions of the people living up and down the Mamberamo River system, they returned to the city and moved the hearts of churches across huge denominational boundaries to help alleviate some of the suffering they saw.  Now, with over 1,000 lbs of supplies donated by these churches, they are returning to retrace their steps on the river to minister to the isolated peoples of the Mamberamo.  To see such passion and commitment among Papuan pastors, sacrificially following Jesus on a very difficult mission, is humbling...and exhilarating.

After saying our goodbyes to the pastors in Dofu, Mark is already in the airplane and I’m about to climb in, when a fellow comes running up to tell me that they've heard over the radio that there is a really sick man in the nearby village of Foitau—can we help him?  Some quick math tells us we have the fuel and daylight to pull it off, and ten minutes later we’re landing in Foitau.  An emaciated old man staggers to the airplane with his adult son.  I help him up into a seat and as I grab his arms there is literally no muscle to be felt—through his dry, worn out skin my hand feels only the thin hard bone of his upper arm.  I hope we're not too late.

Landing back in Sentani, I’m realizing what a gift this first flight back in Papua is to me.  It's as if God wanted to leave me no doubt as to why we're here.  A couple of our pilots are now out in the steaming jungle helping a German widow reach the Kiri-Kiri people.  The Moi believers are hearing 1 Corinthians for the first time.  A pregnant woman, a sick little boy and a deathly ill old man are all getting the touch of much needed medical care.  A group of national pastors is heading out into the wilds to minister physically and spiritually to some of the most isolated and forgotten people on the planet.  And all of this on a single flight.

I'd like to think that we've followed Jesus to this place regardless of whether we see 'fruit' in the ministry...so to see Him work so clearly, in a single day, through a team of deeply flawed missionary aviators and their extremely limited resources, is simply a gift from God that fans our passion for being here.

Gone Are The Illusions

Just finished my first week back on the job in Papua.  One thing that strikes me with renewed freshness is the the sheer impossibility of what we're trying to do out here.  256 different people groups scattered across 153,000 square miles of deep jungle, swamp and mountains.  The physical barriers are almost as difficult to traverse as the staggering linguistic and cultural divides.  And we're trying to be a part of reaching them with a small group of diverse missionaries and  four little airplanes?  Ludicrous.

But the enormity of the job isn't what really gives me pause: it's how fragile and tenuous a hold that this partnership of wandering and sometimes faithless disciples have on this beachhead...particularly when I look up at the mountains facing us and consider the list of things that would threaten to undo us.  It's not the passive opposition of the impassable terrain, the enormity of the task and the limited resources that is the most daunting--it's the active opposition, in its seemingly endless variety of forms, that would love to keep us from moving off the beach at all.  From my limited human perspective, there simply is no way that we will succeed in what we have set out to do here.

Earlier this week, as I was praying about the challenges facing us, I was struck by the stark contrast between the relatively manageable and straight-forward life I'd just left in the U.S. and the ridiculously huge challenges facing a small group of weak and flawed followers of Jesus out here at the end of the earth.  The interesting thing was that while the vast majority of my cowardly person wanted to run and hide (and maybe make things spiritual by praying for a David to come slay our Goliath) something in my soul didn't shrink back from this totally untenable situation.  As crazy as it sounds, the part of me that actually smiled at the mountain of challenges was saying something like, it is really good to be back where there are no illusions of success without the powerful intervention God.

Obviously, you don't have to leave your home country to put yourself in a position of ridiculous dependence on God, but you do have to surrender to following Jesus wherever he leads.  And I can promise you he'll lead you away from the safety and security of your comfort zone...to a place of sweet and utter dependence on him.

En Route

It's 5:00 a.m. in Singapore.  Jet lag has had me awake since 3:30.

The city is magical at this hour.  Absolutely silent.  Dead quiet.  A city of five million people and you can hear your own heartbeat.  In a few hours Singapore will be pulsing with life, but now all is cool, still and tranquil.

We've made it this far on our journey back to Papua.  We'll be here a few more days before pushing off to Jakarta and then on to Sentani.

Reading G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy right now, a delightful read that has you alternating between rapidly turning pages and putting the pages down and digesting what you've just read.  Chesterton is eminently quotable; here's one for today:

...if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small.

Leaving Eden

 There is a time for everything, 

and a season for every activity under heaven...

...a time for war and a time for peace.

Our time away from the place God has called us to is coming to a close.  As I think about leaving, it feels a bit like having to walk out the front gate of Eden.  You don't really know what's on the other side, but you do know that it feels pretty appealing to just stay put in a tranquil place of peace, beauty, and safety.

But, somewhere deep below that feeling, is an exciting certainty that our Master is heading down the path and it's time to follow.  My heart skips a beat at the opportunity, as a mere human--and a very flawed one at that--to participate in what God is doing to reach the far corners of this planet.  The thought that the Creator of the universe somehow bids me to participate in what He's doing takes my ordinary life and moves it to a hyper-real level.  

On January 5th we'll leave on the jet plane for Papua, with stops in Singapore and Jakarta along the way.

We have nothing but gratefulness to the Lord and to the numerous folks who have made this time away from the front lines possible.  We will always carry memories of the peace and beauty of this corner of God's creation called Vermont.  Or is it Eden?

Every sunset was a new masterpiece.

Sledding

The cabin.  Our home of the past four months.

I think I'll most remember Miles Pond as a place of peace