No, no, no! Don’t look down!

Drives through the Andes were the stuff of legends—not myths, not made-up tales, but the histories of dozens of families. (If you missed last week’s post, click on Of Andean hairpin turns: I tried to stifle my hysteria.)

Today you could sit down with anyone who spent time in Lomalinda and he’d tell you hair-raising accounts of journeying through the Andes—stories about upchucking, long delays due to mudslides, other delays at police checkpoints, and reports of filthy bathrooms along the way.

But especially you’d hear stories about the dangers of the trip. You’d hear about urgent prayers for safety.

Linda Wheeler Hollingsworth recently told me of bus trips she and her family took several times through the Andes from Pasto to Puerto Asis while, for many years, her parents served as linguists and Bible translators among Colombia’s Siona people.

Linda writes,

“The bus was usually packed with standing room only, shared with all manner of livestock and people .  . .  and to top it off, loud Colombian music with the occasional translated Cindy Lauper or Stevie Wonder thrown in. My favorite was ‘Solo Llamé a Decir te Quiero.’ [Note from LT: If I remember my Spanish correctly, I think that’s I Just Want to Say I Love You.]

“We could look out the window and see down the mountain in a fog-covered abyss. One of the dual back tires would often hang over the edge. The driver drove pretty fast. . . .”

Read that paragraph again. Imagine sitting beside Linda on that bus.

At that point in the recent conversation with Linda, her older brother, Jim Wheeler, spoke up. “That was the craziest bus ride I remember! I think we did it three or four times.

“The really wild rides were in the old chiva buses. The driver would stop at El Mirador where we had to wait on the one-way traffic to make it up the cliff/mountain. . . .

“I remember walking with [brother] Franky over to the edge of the lookout. We couldn’t see the bottom because there were too many clouds in the way, but we could look off and see the broccoli-like jungle thousands of feet in the distance.”

After waiting for the one-way oncoming traffic to finish, “the driver’s assistant would call everyone into the bus. The driver would light a candle at the nearby shrine, jump into the driver’s seat, cross himself, and then gun the engine for the wild ride down.

“We could see the wheels hanging off the edge. . . .

“What really freaked me out was looking up as we went down the switchback road and seeing saplings sticking out of the mountain on the underside of the road above us. Then I realized that [moments earlier] we had been riding on that same stretch of road in a six-ton bus!

“We could see crosses all along the way where travelers must have fallen.

“One time I was sitting toward the front of the bus. The driver’s assistant looked at me, pointed to his eyes, pointed down the side of the mountain, then shook his finger, ‘No, no, no!’ Better not look down on that trip!

“Often the assistant had to get out and guide the driver around a hairpin turn. That’s when the wheels would really hang over the edge!

“We were always very glad to get to the bottom!”

I guess so, Jim! I guess so! Thanks for sharing your stories with us, Linda and Jim.

These accounts make me tremble. 

How about you?

Can you imagine being a parent in such a locale 

and pushing hard to carry out work God had led you to do?

While contemplating that, I remind myself that God’s ways are not always our ways. “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts’” (Isaiah 55:8-9 NIV).

His ways are higher than ours—that is, He doesn’t look at life in the same way we do.

When His ways crash against our ways, we need to do a “doggie head tilt.” (Mike Metzger: “If your head never tilts, your mind never changes.”) When God asks us to do something that seems crazy, we need to look at life from a different angle—from His angle, not ours.

Jesus warned those who wanted to follow him, saying “Count the cost before you set out” (Luke 14:28).

“Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and he turned and said to them, ‘If anyone comes to me but loves his father, mother, wife, children, brothers or sisters—or even life—more than me, he cannot be my follower. Whoever is not willing to carry his cross and follow me cannot be my follower. If you want to build a tower, you first sit down and decide how much it will cost, to see if you have enough money to finish the job. If you don’t, you might lay the foundation, but you would not be able to finish. Then all who would see it would make fun of you, saying, ‘This person began to build but was not able to finish’” (Luke 14:25-30, NCV).

Those who decided to work in Colombia had taken those verses and Proverbs 20:25 seriously: “Don’t trap yourself by making a rash promise to God and only later counting the cost.”

I believe each family that relocated to Colombia to serve God, like Linda and Jim’s parents did, counted the cost ahead of time. One of those costs was harrowing trips through the Andes, and while over the years some Lomalindians did suffer injuries, some of them serious, I’m not aware of any deaths.

In the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, our colleagues experienced much worse dangers than Andean roads, especially at the hands of Marxist guerrillas.

But they kept working there even when it was dangerous, even when it didn’t make sense.

At such times, Oswald Chambers’ perspective helps us make that necessary doggie head tilt: “Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you might not understand at the time.”

What courage my colleagues chose!

What faith they demonstrated!

And what a privilege God gave me 

to work alongside them and learn from them.

“We mean business. Get out, or you will hear from us again.”

Our family climbed out of a taxi in front of our mission agency’s guest house in Bogotá, the capital city of Colombia.

A line of our new colleagues filed out to the sidewalk and gave us a warm welcome. Perhaps they’d been looking forward to meeting Dave, new teacher for their kids, and Matt and Karen, new friends and classmates for their kids.

Motioning us toward the entrance, one of them said, “Excuse the porch and the mess on the first floor. You heard about the bomb, didn’t you?”

(If you missed last week’s post, click on Who would bomb missionaries? And why?)

On the night of August 4, 1976, twelve days before our family arrived, Bill Nyman and his daughter, Melodie, picked up Will and Lee Kindberg and three of their kids at the airport. It was about midnight when they pulled up in front of the guest house. 

While Bill searched for the key, Will noticed a package next to the door. Assuming it was for someone inside, he picked it up and said, only joking, “What’s this? A bomb?” At that moment, Will saw an electrical device on the package. And it flickered. It was a bomb! “Everyone take cover!”

Seconds later a blast shattered windows throughout the neighborhood and mutilated the Nymans’ cars but, by God’s grace, the Kindbergs and Nymans received only minor wounds.

The explosion left the cement porch cratered and the heavy iron door disfigured. It blew the door’s window into shreds, lodging shards into walls and stairs leading to the second floor.

The blast ripped the steel kickplate into shrapnel, which, Will Kindberg wrote later, “cut through steel banister uprights, leaving the top and bottom pieces reaching out to each other.”

Throughout the first floor, shrapnel “had gone through walls, two by fours, suitcases, and trunks full of clothing,” Will said later.

“Splintered wall paneling was lying here and there. Glass littered the floors. At the end of the hall, the telephone had been ripped from the wall and the wires severed by one of the steel shards. . . . Murderous intent was plainly evident.”

But, thank God, everyone was upstairs asleep, and although some received injuries, none was serious. Some people still have scars that remind them they lived through it.

Upon arriving in Colombia,

I still did not know that for some time,

Marxist anti-American guerrillas

had been targeting our organization and others like it.

At that time, I did not know

that our director, Forrest Zander, had said,

“We were aware that our enemies wanted

our mission out of the country,

but we didn’t know they would

resort to such deadly tactics.”

At that time, I did not know that

the day after the bombing,

the guest house phone rang,

and a voice on the other end said,

“We mean business.

Get out, or you will hear from us again.”

(from Chapter 3, Please, God, 

Don’t Make Me Go:

AFoot-Dragger’s Memoir)

So, my ignorance—all that I did not know—led me to embrace optimism, believing the guest house bombing was a one-time event and we’d seen the end of such violence.

God had sent us to this dangerous nation, Colombia,

but He had arrived ahead of us

to prepare the way.

He does that for us nowadays as much as He did in Old Testament times:

“The Lord Himself goes before you and will be with you;

He will never leave you nor forsake you.

Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged.”

(Deuteronomy 3:18)

“No matter what path we walk down, God is one step ahead,” writes Kelly Balarie. “No matter what mountain we come up against, He is already climbing it. No matter what journey of uncertainty we encounter, God is 100 steps further. He’s laying out our path and preparing our steps.”

“Shushing up and slowing down”

“Shushing up and slowing down,” writes Kelly Balarie, “is paramount to God working in us—and strengthening us. . . . God is ready to hit us with unfathomable new perspectives—ones that redefine our past, present, and problems if we will only stop, receive, and consider. Will we? Will we walk unafraid into His presence? Into God’s rhythms? Not cowering from mysteries?” (Fear Fighting: Awakening Courage to Overcome Your Fears)

Sometimes God urges us to come closer. It’s almost as if we hear Him calling us by name, inviting us to quiet ourselves and deliberately listen to Him.

He summons us to a thin place where we mortals experience a sacred intimacy with Him.

That’s what happened to Samuel one night while he was lying down, perhaps trying to fall asleep. We picture a scene without noise or hustle or bustle. And out of the hush, God called his name, “Samuel!”

And in that thin place, alone with God, Samuel answered, “Speak, Lord, I’m listening.”

So, God spoke. He told Samuel to pay attention, because “I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears about it tingle” (1 Samuel 3:11, NIV). Samuel was going to receive an important message from God, and, because of his readiness to listen, Samuel didn’t miss it.

How easy it would be for us, in our cluttered, clanging lifestyles, to miss hearing God’s voice. That’s what Kelly Balarie meant when she wrote of the importance of “shushing up and slowing down.”

Sometimes God catches our attention on busy days, within complicated chapters of our lives. Unlike Samuel, Moses was at work, doing his everyday duties—herding his flock on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 3:1-5)—when God called to him, “Moses, Moses!”

“I’m here,” he answered.

Then God said, “Take off your sandals—you’re standing on holy ground.”

And in that thin place, God revealed His identity to Moses (the mighty “I am who I am” in verse 14) and gave him life-changing information for not only himself but for all Israelites.

When God invites us to focus on Him, He longs for us to respond the way Moses did when He called him—but He gives us a choice. (Our loss if we turn Him down!)

God wants us to experience an intimacy with Him, a quiet space where we’re aware we are standing on holy ground. He invites us to worship, pray, reflect, enjoy Him, and pay attention to Him—because like with Samuel and Abraham, He has important information for us.

If God calls our names in the midst of our busy duties, like he did with Moses, what are we to do if we simply can’t drop everything and walk away?

One option is to schedule time to meet with Him every day, such as setting the alarm clock 45 minutes earlier than usual. Another option would be getting out of town for a weekend in-depth personal retreat.

But even if we can’t change our schedules, we can change our mindsets and deep inner thoughts. We can be conscious of God’s presence throughout the day, hear His words, and carry out conversations with Him.

In his daily devotional, Bread for the Journey, Henri Nouwen ponders Psalm 46:10, “Be still and acknowledge that I am God.” 

He writes, “These are words to take with us 

in our busy lives. 

We may think about stillness 

in contrast to our noisy world. 

But perhaps we can go further 

and keep an inner stillness 

even while we carry on business, 

teach, work construction, make music, 

or organize meetings. . . . 

This still place is where God can dwell 

and speak to us. . . . 

Within that stillness 

God can be our gentle guide 

in everything we think, say, or do.”

God wants us to be sensitive to His nudges and whisperings, to ponder His Word in light of our own situations. He welcomes our thoughts and questions, He hopes we’ll be open and transparent, and He wants to give us insight and encouragement and direction.

He can do that best when we set ourselves apart with Him and listen.

Let’s remember what Kelly Balarie said:

“God is ready to hit us with unfathomable new perspectives

—ones that redefine our past, present, and problems

if we will only stop, receive, and consider.

Will we?

Will we walk unafraid into His presence?

Into God’s rhythms?

Not cowering from mysteries?”

(from Fear Fighting: Awakening Courage to Overcome Your Fears)