40 Years in the Jungle

My friend was describing a book she was reading to me. It was about a missionary God sent to one of the most fearsome tribes in the Amazon. He couldn’t find any Mission Boards to send him and when he arrived independently, none of the missionary groups would support him. And so, alone, he headed off into the jungle. Apparently the book describes weeks of staggering lost in the Amazon, getting shot with arrows, deliriously waiting for wounds to heal, sitting around in various tribal settlements unable to communicate, until finally, after 30 or 40 YEARS away, God uses him to convert the entire tribe he went out to see.

It’s a thought-provoking story for us, in our high-paced society. I’m always amazed by how much ‘journeying’ time God allows people. In bible times journeys that we would do in a few hours in the car, would take days and days on foot. And yet the Israelites, Jesus, the disciples, the early church, they all travelled a lot. God thought it was a worthwhile use of their time to travel and spread the word, in spite of its slowness.

We know Jesus stopped in some towns along the way, teaching and healing people when He was journeying, and that the Israelites spent their time whinging while they were travelling through the desert, but really, there’s a lot of ‘travel time’ in the bible the details of which are not described. We don’t know what their daily routine was, what they discussed over hours and hours of travelling, whether they got ill, how they travelled, what they ate and where. The silence on this minutiae seems to suggest life simply ticking over. What were they doing? Just plodding on, getting on with it, as we all must.

Realistically, living the Christian life probably has a great deal more to do with plodding on, than it does actually arriving at significant places or moments. When that missionary was prostrate in the jungle, wounded and delirious, how effective do you think he considered his mission to be? And yet God was working His purpose out. It was a long term plan, with some serious, plodding ‘travel time’ involved.

Remaining faithful to God in the quiet, ordinary times, when chances of revival seem remote, when faith seems routine and when outreach seems slow, develops real persistence and trust. If you are praying regularly, reading your bible and growing spiritually, then you are not idling, in spite of how things may feel. Ask God to give you patience to trust in His plan, even if it seems to be unfolding very slowly!   

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