Title is taken from "The Amusings of a Missionary" -books by Missionary Ken Board, who served the Lord for 53 faithful years in Kyushu. God used his influence in calling me also to full-time ministry.
① 雪が溶けるまでそのまま待つ。雪が邪魔をしていること(試練が起きていること)を受け入れないで、神様に怒ることができます。
② 右折か左折をする。神様のナビである聖書はバイパスにどう戻ればいいのか(これから先、主の御心をどう進むべきなのか)を見せてくれるかもしれませんが、時にははっきりわかりづらい場合があります。左折をするのか...右折をするのか...どちらを選らべば、より早くパイパスに着くのかは分かりにくいかもしれませんが、とにかく、どっちかに曲がらないと、ナビは道案内変更をしてくれません。
I've seen these signs when I have gone on a drive through the country a few times since arriving in Hokkaido. Some of the smaller roads just aren't worth ploughing in the winter. Yesterday, my friends and I were driving home from the Royce Chocolate Factory in Tobetsu, and we stumbled upon one of these signs unexpectedly. The GPS had us cutting through some straight, Hokkaido, country roads to get to the main highway and insisted that we go straight at a four way intersection. Except.... there was no road... just a sign like this with tons of snow. One of my friends said we should go left, the other said we should go right. Ultimately, it didn't matter which direction we went becasue we knew the GPS would redirect us. I suppose we could have parked the car and set up camp until spring when the snow would melt off, but that just isn't realistic. Have you ever done that in life though? Am I the only one has trusted the GPS or Google Maps more than God in the past?
Have you ever been traveling on a straight road in life with everything clear in view, attempting to follow God's GPS- His Word, until you came to a dead end like this? You assumed you should keep heading in the same direction in life; afterall, God hadn't indicated otherwise. But some trauma or trial may have suddenly shaken things up on you. You can longer proceed on the same, straight road. You're faced with a decision:
1. You could stand there and wait for the "snow to melt." Instead of accepting that the snow is in your way, you could get angry at God or just stand there and feel sorry for yourself.
2. You could turn to the left or to the right. Although the GPS, God's Word, may shed wisdom as to which way you should turn to get yourself back to the main highway of His will... it isn't always crystal clear to us. You may not really know which way will get you back to the main highway faster, but the bottom line is... You have to do something or the GPS won't redirect you. You have to pick yourself up and move forward.
Proverbs 24:16
For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again...
God won't redirect us if we just stand there, refusing to move on from the past. You have to move forward, either left or right. Once you pick yourself up, God will redirect you to the main highway of His will.
Isaiah 43:18-19
Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing...
These words were given to Isaiah by the Lord before the Jews were even exiled to Babylon. He was looking ahead at them already in exile when he spoke this. The Lord says earlier in verse 14: "For your sake I have sent to Babylon and have brought down all their nobles, and the Chaldeans..." The Lord, the Holy One of Israel, had a plan to deliver the Jews before He even brought them to Babylon! God promised through the prophets that the Babylonian exile wouldn't last forever. They are told not to "remember the former things." Instead of dwelling on the past when God "shook things up" for them... Instead of sitting there, waiting for the pile of snow to melt off... being angry at God for bringing them to Babylon... They should put their perspective on how God says, "Behold, I will do a new thing." We know from reading the book of Ezra that many Jews chose to stay in Babylon even after Cyrus and Artaxerxes made the decrees to let the Jews return. These Jews missed out on the wonderful "new" things God had in store for them because they weren't willing to take a leap of faith. They weren't willing to drive into the unknown and let God direct them to the main highway.
We shouldn't stand there waiting for the snow ahead to melt with the coming of spring! God already has planned a detour before we even knew we would come to that dead end! He has something better. He will redirect us if we let Him! He wants to use us for His praise, honor, and glory.
Isaiah 43:21
This people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my praise.
The numerous opportunites to fly as an MK along with my dream to become an airline pilot as a teenager makes me interested when anything airline or aviation-related appears in the news. Yesterday's collision at Haneda Airport will go down in history as the consequences of human error or miscommunication in Air Traffic Control. However, I don't want to focus on the topic of "miscommunication." Rather, the 12 member crew (2 pilots and 10 flight attendants) strike me as heroes. People were sliding down the escape shoots while both engines were errupting in flames. Smoke and heat from the explosion was already filling the cabin, and you could even see flashlights being used to show people to the exits. Only three of the eight emergency exits could be used, yet somehow all 367 passengers and cabin crew escaped from the aircraft in 18 minutes before the fuselage itself was engulfed in flames two minutes after the fuselage was engulfed in flames. New York Times and other oversees media are calling it a miracle and praising Japan Airlines' training of its cabin crew and protocol.
Since I have the flow of the In-flight Safety Videos practically memorized, I usually don't pay too much attention. I may even haphazardly think, "Will all this stuff really work if we make an emergency landing somewhere?" How apathetic of me! If those flight attendants and pilots had never taken their training for emergency situations seriously, there would have been a huge death toll on the JAL flight. The only thing passengers could see out the windows was red and smoke... but the crew overcame the chaos and panic, guiding everyone to safety.
This all reminded of God's Cabin Crew. Who's that? Christians are God's Cabin Crew. We're supposed to be guiding passengers to safety before it's too late and the flames engulf them in eternal death. The task is daunting, but God hasn't given us the spirit of fear, but of love, power, and of a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7) The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16), and it works every time. Some passengers may doubt the success of emergency protocol when they watch the In-flight Safety Video. After all, it will only matter in the "unlikely event of an evacuation." Likewise, many of our friends or family have heard the Gospel from us several times, but they will not accept it. They put it off because well... eternal death seems like "an unlikely event." Yet, actually choosing where to spend eternity is a "likely event." Sometimes it takes one incident to trigger a change in their receptivity towards the Gospel. Even if a passgenger didn't take those In-flight Safety Videos seriously, he would have to if he was flying on yesterday's flight. We may witness several times to somebody and think that we are wasting our time. However, when the time comes our efforts will be worth it. They need to be reminded of the Bible's In-flight Safety Video, the Gospel, as often as they can for when that "emergency landing" happens.
We as Christians have the responsibility to take our jobs as God's Cabin Crew seriously. We don't do it because we are employees with a salary. We do it because of the mandate Christ gave us in the Great Commission. It's the least we can do to repay His priceless gift to us. We have to take our training as seriously as that Cabin Crew did. Local churches have to train their believers with protocol like Japan Airlines. Christians, therefore, must be equipped and ready at all times to share the Gospel. We don't know when the flames of death will engulf the aircraft our passengers fly in. Our passengers may silently ridicule the In-flight Safety Video every time they hear it. They may want to enjoy a comfortable flight without being reminded of death or eternity. Actually, there were people like that in Noah's day...
Matthew 24:36-39 (Genesis 6-7)
The people in Noah's day kept living their comfortable lives, never caring too much for the Ark that Noah was building nor the message that he preached (2 Peter 2:5). When the Great Flood came, they took it all seriously... but it was too late for them.
Hebrews 11:7
It required a great deal of faith for Noah to build the Ark. We have been saved by faith. Our faith must remain strong as we cling to the power of the Gospel to save others. Imagine the grave faces of the crew members in the last few minutes before the aircraft touches down as they sit straped to their seats in front of the emergency exits ready for action if something goes wrong. They have faith in all their, checklists, manuals, and training. So should we.
2 Peter 3
In the end times, people will mock, as they already do now, the Bible and the Lord's ability to keep the promises in His Word. They will forget the power of God's spoken Word at the time of creation. They will forget about the Great Flood. However, Peter admonishes his Jewish Christian readers to not become ignorant like that. God is suspending coming judgement because He is longsuffering and yearns for all people to be saved. If we, God's Cabin Crew, become apathetic and let our guard down towards the urgency of "time," we won't be successful like the Japan Airlines cabin crew. There will surely be a death toll when the day of the Lord comes as "a thief in the night." (verse 10)
We have to keep our minds in the game. What if a flight attendant on an American carrier were chatting with the other flight attendant across the aisle about what to eat for dinner when they got to their hotel as the aircraft was in its final landing position (I've never seen this happen, just imagining it could😂). If that flight collided with another aircraft on the runway like yesterday, there would be a death toll because those flight attendants weren't ready for action.
"Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God," 2 Peter 3:11-12
In case you'd like to review Japan Airlines' In-flight Safety Video 😏