God's Word

Monday, July 17 
We’re up before the break of dawn to catch our early morning flight out of Port au Prince. It takes the entire 2.5 hours to check in and make it to our gate due to the extreme congestion and inefficiency of the airport. 

When we're finally up in the air I admire the bird's eye view.

After a relatively short flight to Ft. Lauderdale we find our next flight significantly delayed due to a freak storm over the airport.

When we do finally take off we are redirected to fly around what is left of the storm.

The delays cause us to miss our connecting flights; the team to Calgary, and me to Vancouver, but thankfully Air Canada is waiting for us with hotel and food vouchers when we deplane. That night is a short one for us as we need to be up at 3:45 a.m. to catch our 4:00 a.m. shuttle to the airport the following morning.  

Now soaring 38,000 feet over the earth I have all the time I need to piece together blog stories out of the many sentences scrawled messily in my journal.  

For me, the most important part of this trip is the gospel. On one of our final evening devotions we read these words:

"Some think it hard that there should be nothing for them but ruin if they will not believe in Jesus Christ; but if you will think for a minute you will see that it is just and reasonable. 

I suppose there is no way for a man to keep his strength up except by eating. If you were to say, “I will not eat again, I despise such animalism”, you might go to Madeira, or travel in all lands (supposing you lived long enough!), but you would most certainly find that no climate and no exercise would avail to keep you alive if you refused food. Would you then complain, “It is a hard thing that I should die because I do not believe in eating”? 

It is not an unjust thing that if you are so foolish as not to eat, you must die. It is precisely so with believing. “Believe, and thou art saved”. If thou wilt not believe, it is no hard thing that thou shouldst be lost. It would be strange indeed if it were not to be the case.

A man who is thirsty stands before a fountain. “No,” he says, “I will never touch a drop of moisture as long as I live. Cannot I get my thirst quenched in my own way?” We tell him, no; he must drink or die. He says, “I will never drink; but it is a hard thing that I must therefore die. It is a bigoted, cruel thing to tell me so.” He is wrong. His thirst is the inevitable result of neglecting a law of nature. 

You, too, must believe or die; why refuse to obey the command? Drink, man, drink! Take Christ and live. There is the way of salvation, and to enter you must trust Christ; but there is nothing hard in the fact that you must perish if you will not trust the Saviour." (Spurgeon, around the Wicket Gate)

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Matthew 3:14-15

I pray that God's Word that was shared each night with the team and the love we showed in both Word and Deed to the locals may have an eternal impact on their never dying souls. I have faith that God is able, and that His Word will not return to Him void.

So shall My Word be that goeth forth out of My mouth: 

it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, 

and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. 

Isaiah 55:11