Tag: history

A Love Story

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On Valentine’s Day, 1948 a young couple celebrated their wedding. One witness remarked that “not many are privileged to see such love and total giving on the faces of two people. I will never forget it.”* Little did the bride and groom know that sixty-eight years later, their story would be known the world over. 

I first “met” the groom Nate Saint through the pages of The Fate of the Yellow Woodbee by Dave and Neta Jackson, a book my dad read to me. Later, I discovered more about Nate when an excerpt from Jungle Pilot appeared in my school reading book. I savored that story and years later tracked it down to read it again. Combine those experiences with stories from my dad about working at a mission hospital in Ecuador, and Nate was stamped on my hero list!

However, it wasn’t until this past month that I actually read all of Jungle Pilot: The Gripping Story of the Life and Witness of Nate Saint, Martyred Missionary in Ecuador by Russel T. Hitt. It lives up to the “gripping” claim and is the perfect post for this week because the story of Nate Saint is a love story. Or maybe it’s actually a loves story. Let’s look at these “loves” one at a time.

Jungle Pilot is the story of a man who loved to bring others into his corner of the world through writing. “I don’t want to be a great writer but I long to express myself…I want to share the stories that are unfolding all around me. Mine would only be attempts, to be sure, but these attempts plus helpful criticism from others may help me eventually to be able to tell stories with the flavor that can only come from an eyewitness.” (pg. 11) This love poured itself onto letters, journal entries and articles. What a mercy that it did because these words eventually formed the structure of Jungle Pilot. 

Early on in Jungle Pilot, we see that Nate’s story is also the story of a man who loved flying. After his first experience behind the controls with his brother Sam, “he never could get enough of airplanes,” (pg. 46). Speaking from personal experience, it is a thrill to hold a plane’s controls! Nate possessed a keen mechanical ability as well. His sister-in-law once said, “I wearied of nuts and bolts for dinner,” of the dinner table conversations they shared (pg. 52). As Nate worked his way through Army Air Corp training, it seemed that he was made to be a pilot. Then – just as he was about to start flying – his childhood nemesis osteomyelitis returned. Although he stayed in the Army, he would never fly there. “I was heartbroken,” Nate reported (pg. 66) about his shattered dream. However, he soon got back on his feet. It’s a good thing he did, too, because within a few years, Nate found himself flying as much as he could. No, he wasn’t dodging or dropping bombs with the Army, but flying with Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF) had plenty of dangers lurking in short runways, unexpected downdrafts and more. Thankfully, he had people around him to help him bear the load of work and worry. Of those people, a few stand out, especially his family.

Undoubtedly, Jungle Pilot is the story of a man who loved his family dearly. You’ll have to read how Nate and Marj met for yourself. (God writes the best love stories, doesn’t He?) The love evident at their wedding only grew deeper with time. Once Nate wrote to Marj about their wedding: “If I had known you before as I know you now, I would have answered the preacher with a shout instead of a quiet ‘I do’.” (pg. 183) This real-life love extended to their children as seen in Nate’s response to the news that Kathy was born. (He was in Panama at the time for medical care while Marj was in Ecuador.) “Thank God for the wonderful news in the telegram…Honey, don’t be afraid to give that little gal lots of loving. She’ll need the practice for when her daddy gets home…I can hardly wait to see our precious baby.” (pg. 139). Later, Stevie, and Phil joined the family.  Amidst all the demands of pioneer missionary work, Nate made time for talking with his little ones, sharing Bible stories and praying with them (pg. 180).

But Nate’s love extended beyond his family making his story that of a man who loved others, even the unloved. He showed love for the the missionaries in his daily service as a pilot, mechanic, handyman and friend. He loved the native Ecuadorians and the Shell Oil workers as he used his skills to help them as well. Then his love reached beyond the jungle barriers to the unknown tribes, even the “Aucas” – known as killers – who could give him nothing in return. After his death, his wife Marj wrote to their children, “For a long time you children have prayed for the Aucas…Daddy would want you to love them and thank our heavenly Father that our prayers for these Indians are being answered,” (pg. 286).

Yes, Jungle Pilot is the story of a man who loved writing, flying, his family, and even strangers. Yet there is one more love left and it’s the greatest love of all. Jungle Pilot is the story of a man who both loved God and trusted God’s love. Of one life-threatening experience, Nate wrote, “I wasn’t afraid to die…And more important, I knew that God loved me like a son. The proof of His love was His real Son who suffered in my place on a Roman cross at Calvary,” (pg. 91). If you read Jungle Pilot, I think you will agree that it was this love that fueled everything else Nate did. This was the love that compelled him to say, “May His will be done,” (pg. 66) when he realized his Army pilot life was grounded. This was the love that inspired him to have engraved on his and Marj’s wedding bands Psalm 34:3: “O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.” It was this love that emboldened him to serve the missionaries under hazardous conditions to help them in “giving the Word of Life” (pg. 35). Lastly, it was this love that enabled him to live out this verse: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” (John 15:13, KJV) on January 8, 1956 when he gave up his life for the Aucas because “they too were men for whom Christ died.” (pg. 35)

There’s so much more I could say, so many stories I didn’t share. I hope you’ll get an opportunity to read Jungle Pilot for yourself and be able to feel like an eyewitness to Nate Saint’s story. May we all know what it is to love to do good things and to love people. Even more importantly, may we know the love that the heavenly Father has lavished on us – both on Valentine’s Day and every day – and may it be the fuel for everything else we do.  

If you would like to read Jungle Pilot, you can get both your own print copy AND audiobook version by making a donation of $10 or more to Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF) this month (for first-time donors).  

* Russel T. Hitt, Jungle Pilot: The Gripping Story of the Life and Witness of Nate Saint, Martyred Missionary in Ecuador, with an epilogue by Stephen F. Saint (Grand Rapids: Discovery House Publishers, 1997), 122. All quotations are taken from this book unless otherwise noted.

 

Groceries & Gratitude

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Over a year later, I still think of it often when I’m grocery shopping. Standing amidst long aisles packed with food items that I can just take off the shelves and pay for myself, I remember them.

Lines of mothers and children waiting to get their one loaf of bread with their ration cards.

This was not a pivotal scene in Liz Tolsma’s novel Snow on the Tulips. The story follows Cornelia, a young widow engulfed in the pains and predicaments of life during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands near the end of WWII and focuses on her struggle for courage as the Resistance movement seeps into her life.

But this one scene stands among my strongest memories.  Like I said, it’s been over a year and I still think of it.

It has changed a little part of my life.

Perhaps it’s guilt, you ask? I mean, there certainly are starving people in the world today while I stand in that grocery store overflowing with such excess. True, I could feel guilty sometimes.

But mostly I just feel…grateful.

I feel grateful for the plenty and the opportunities to share it. I feel grateful for the ability to choose what to place on our table. I feel grateful that, of all the uncertainties in life right now, I don’t have to wonder if we’ll have bread for our next meal.

Yet, maybe someday, I will be wondering if there will be anything to eat for the next meal.

When I think of that, I’m grateful for the stories of the past because they remind me of two truths: 1) people can get by on very little and 2) God provides. Certainly, we prefer variety and plenty in our food, but when push comes to shove, one really can be sustained on bread and broth or like the pioneers on bacon and hardtack. Then the Lord provides. Sometimes He provides by multiplying the 3 fish and 5 loaves. Other times He supplies by taking starving souls to feast with Him in heaven.

This is one of the blessings of history. We can prepare to face struggles courageously if we take time to study the past. And so, I am also grateful for authors like Liz Tolsma who take time to tell the life-like (albeit fictionalized) stories of those who have gone before us through times of plenty and times of poverty and watched God provide in His own ways.

He is, after all, the God Who makes the tulips grow through the snow.

Simply Stepping Stones: What Thanksgiving Is Really About (It’s Not Just the Pilgrims)

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All things considered, I think you could forget the Pilgrims and still celebrate Thanksgiving this year. 

But, no, just eating a stuffed bird or watching men chase each other with a funny-shaped ball does not count as celebrating Thanksgiving. If that’s all we do, let’s be honest, please, and call it Turkey Day or even Football Day.

(Note: I don’t actually have anything against turkeys – especially when they’re on my table – or funny-shaped balls; I just would like us to call things what they are, even holidays.)

Back to Thanksgiving. 

It’s not that the Pilgrims would be all fine and jolly with you forgetting them entirely. At least William Bradford would be concerned. And with good reason. 

He understood a particular aspect of humanity: unless you’ve gone through the suffering required to reach a goal yourself, you’re apt to not value the reward nearly as much as those who did suffer. Bradford wanted the Pilgrims’ descendants to treasure what they were given, so he wrote an account of their struggles called Of Plymouth Plantation. (It’s worth cracking the cover. I believe Grandma called it “fascinating”.)

But, as far as Thanksgiving Day itself goes, I think the Pilgrims really wouldn’t mind if we happen to talk about them less. Squanto and Samoset probably wouldn’t be bothered either.

Why? Quite simply, it’s not about them.

Yes, Thanksgiving is a good time to remember our history, but it’s still not about the Pilgrims.

Then what or who is it about?

In Bradford’s own words, this group of sojourners who became known as the Pilgrims saw themselves as potentially “but stepping stones” to something – or you could say Someone – much more important than themselves. 

“Last and not least, they cherished a great hope and inward zeal of laying good foundations or at least of making some way towards it, for the propagation and advance of the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in the remote parts of the world, even though they should be but stepping stones to others in the performance of so great a work.” [1]

Then who is Thanksgiving about?

Thanksgiving is – or is supposed to be – a day when we take time to be thankful not just to each other but really to God, the God Who sustained the Pilgrims, the God Who prepared Samoset and Squanto to help them, the God Who has been directing the stories of our lives ever before and ever since the Mayflower anchored off America’s shore, the God Who makes plants grow and created that turkey on your table. 

God really is the One the Pilgrims would want you to be thinking of and thanking this Thanksgiving, even if you forget them. After all, the Pilgrims may be simply “stepping stones”. 

“Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.  

For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.”

~Psalm 100:3-5, KJV

 

1 William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation: Bradford’s History of the Plymouth Settlement: 1608-1650, pg. 21.

A Living Word

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I’ve thought that if I had lived during the era of the War for Independence and could have picked my husband’s profession, I’d choose printing. Laying out rows of type (backwards so that the text would appear left-to-right on the printed page) seems fascinating, and I’d like to think that I wouldn’t mind at all if Mr. Printer’s hands and apron were all ink-stained. What would that matter compared to the joy of promulgated news, knowledge and noteworthy notions? Besides, I figured I would be able to manage the print shop nicely (all right, with some help) if my hero joined the ranks of the American militia. After all, we would surely strive to practice what we printed!

Yes, if my last name were Gutenberg itself I’d be rather thrilled (though I admit to true partiality to my real last name as is…It’s rather a handy title, you see.) But why Gutenberg, you ask? Ah, well, it was back in the 1400s that Johannes Gutenberg invented the first movable type printing press. This invention made possible faster and economical printing of all kinds, especially books. 

Thanks to movable type, phrases like these haven been printed and distributed around the world:

“Humility makes great men twice honorable.” ~Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac

“If I can stop one Heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain…”  ~Emily Dickinson 

“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” ~Charles Dickens

“Elementary, my dear Watson.” Sherlock Holmes, via Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The writers behind these words wrote them for various reasons, I’m sure, but, I think, they all understood that what someone reads affects him. Whether their goal was to instruct, encourage, inspire, or amuse, they counted on the power of the printed word. If what people read only goes in their eyes and out the back of their heads and doesn’t change how they live at all – even for moments – I think most writers would scurry off to a different profession. The world certainly knows that writers don’t write for the money involved!

Yes, words have power. Yet books fall apart, ink fades and paper decays. Words really cannot live on their own. They are like marionettes, sitting motionless unless someone gives them action.

There is, however, one Living Word. It is of this Word that a German – who demonstrated that he believed in the power of words by nailing a parchment to a chapel door in Wittenberg on this day 498 years ago – wrote the following lines.

Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing;

Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing:

Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;

Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same,

And He must win the battle.

And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,

We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us:

The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;

His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure,

One little word shall fell him.

That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth;

The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him Who with us sideth:

Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;

The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still,

His kingdom is forever. 

~”A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”, Martin Luther

And it is of this Word that it was written first by hand and then printed for all the world to read: 

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. ~John 1:14, ESV

Now that’s a Living Word. 

And what became of Martin Luther’s words nailed to the Wittenberg Chapel on October 31, 1517? Those Ninety-Five Theses sparked a movement that took Europe by storm and, arguably, changed the course of history: the Reformation. Whatever your view of that event, it does show that words (especially when they are brought to life by actions) have power. Let’s remember that on this Reformation Day.