
Hong Kong island from the Aberdeen side, 2006
Yesterday during my conversation with my long-time friends Belva and Maureen, I realized something positively and powerfully true: in the four times I’ve flown alone to Asia and back, and the one time with my younger son, I never WAS alone.
Trip # 1, crossing the Pacific roughly eleven hours after I heard the news that sent me online to book a flight, on the phone to call my friend Julia to hopefully connect with her parents in Hong Kong, and then hurriedly to the bedroom to pack a suitcase, I tried to keep my heart and mind at peace by reading Brendan Manning’s book “Ruthless Trust.” He wrote, “ For me and many others, Jesus is the revelation of the only God worthy of trust … The promise of his (God’s) presence and the presence of his promise ….” I prayed all the way for safety and health for my daughter-in-law and newly arriving over two months too early granddaughter. Was I alone? NO! God’sars of promise and peace wrapped me on that flight, and HE proved his promises are faithful when 1) I easily found Julia’s mother in the airport and 2) Elsa arrived safely and never developed a serious complication in the seven weeks she was in the NICU. I counted 21 miracles on that trip! You may think miracles are only things like raising the dead and restoring seeing eyes to the blind, but when God arranges three successive apartments to stay in on an island with mile-high rents and hotel room costs, a complete Thanksgiving dinner when the best you were hoping for was turkey sandwiches at a deli, and warmly welcoming people – strangers who became friends – in a church in Kowloon, I call those miracles.
Trip # 2, crossing the Pacific again, this time to mainland China and Thailand, on the I remained in good health and relative clarity of mind despite the 35 hours without sleep. On my return trip with what I thought was plenty of time to transfer in the airport in Hong Kong, I was able to pick up my bags (which couldn’t be checked through), check them through security, go outside the terminal, go back into the international side of the terminal, go through security again, check my bags, go through security again, and get an iced tea at the Starbucks right beside my gate with a whopping eight minutes to spare before boarding the plane! Was I alone? NO!
Trip #3, again to mainland China and Thailand, no issues going, but coming back I flew from the interior to another mainland airport where, surely, there would be signs in English and English-speaking workers who could direct me to the van to get to the ferry to get across the harbor to the airport. Uh, wrong. I exited the terminal to a parking lot filled with vans with nothing but Mandarin characters on them. Just as God says in Isaiah 30: 21, “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’” And that’s exactly what happened, when God provided an airline pilot from Taiwan, walking behind me, to guide me to the van that went to the ferry terminal. Was I alone? NO WAY!
Trip #4, the trip that Orbitz almost cancelled due to a flight change by Korean Airlines, thanks to the 24-hour flu bug I caught, I was able to talk directly to Korean Air and salvage my trip by leaving a day early, with the added benefit of staying in a hotel in Seoul to rest up, have lunch, and exercise in the hotel gym. On the way back I was blessed with an extra day to stay with dear friends in Chiang Mai, get a birthday massage, and hear an incredible story of God’s power and providence. Was I alone, ever? NOT EVER!
Trip $5 to mainland China with my younger son, with (again, we thought) ample time to arrive in Beijing and catch our flight to the interior, we met an impossibly long line at immigration, surely too long for us to get through and catch our flight. BUT a cleaning woman directed us (and how did she speak English and see our predicament??) directed us to go through the diplomaticl ine. Then when the inter-terminal train zipped right past the terminal we needed and deposited us at the next terminal, again Isaiah 30:21 in the form of a Chinese university professor behind us, traveling back home (to the same city we were heading for) from teaching in Texas, who helped us navigate security and find the train that WOULD take us to the terminal we needed. Then when Satan broke all Heck loose at the next security checkpoint, we still made it to the gate in time to board just before they closed the boarding.
Oh,Rose, why do you ever doubt God’s love and PRESENCE? I can almost hear my eternally patient Heavenly Father saying,”Tsk, tsk, my beloved daughter, how many times do I have to pull your hide out of the fire before you WILL TRUST MY LOVE FOR YOU and THAT MY PLANS ARE FOR YOUR GOOD???
I actually got word from God back in 2013 through an intercessor at a Healing Room – and NOT the intercessors I was praying with – that said, “I’m trying to bless you. You have to LET me!”
Okay, 1) I must be a slow learner when it comes to my heart catching up with God’s truth and 2) the sons of Korah said it more poetically than I just did:
For the director of music. A maskil[c] of the Sons of Korah.
1 As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
3 My tears have been my food
day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
4 These things I remember
as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God
under the protection of the Mighty One[d]
with shouts of joy and praise
among the festive throng.
“Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
6 My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.
7 Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
8 By day the Lord directs his love,
at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.
9 I say to God my Rock,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?”
10 My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
11 Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God. Psalm 42:1-11 NIV
I share my all-too frail humanity with you all, with someone else who, like me,has a hard time catching your heart up to God’s truth, to encourage you that GOD WILL NEVER LET YOU WALK ALONE! Even when you may be physically alone and in dicey circumstances, GOD IS WITH YOU! Remember WHO walked in the fiery furnace WITH Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego! He is the same today for you as he was then with them!
This is NOT just the power of positive thinking. Positive thinking couldn’t have gotten me out of any of these troubles or created any of these miracles. GOD DID!
Put your hope in God, for yes, you will yet find reason to praise Him!