Look 286, Apr 8, ’10, Death by Coconut
I had just explained my broken ribs (doing something stupid on a motorbike) when one of the missionaries at the table said, “That reminds me . . . “ and started his story.
“It was typhoon season and a huge storm was about to hit our area. I had been in town and was tearing along in my Volkswagen van, desperate to get home before the storm struck. As I bounced and banged along the washboard gravel road, I suddenly hit a nasty pothole. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a hubcap fly off the front wheel and disappear in the tall grass on the side of the road. I slammed on the brakes and jumped out of the van to look for it. Hubcaps are expensive. They are also almost impossible to find in tall grass wildly waving in the increasing wind.
“As I stumbled along in the screaming wind, with head bowed searching the ground around me, I began hearing THUD! THUNK! THUMP! all around me. I stopped, looked up, and realized I was right on the edge of a coconut plantation with sixty-feet high palms and the thuds were the sound of ten-pound coconuts hitting the ground at head smashing speeds.
“I immediately imagined the first line in the next newsletter my widow would send out,Fred was killed instantly when a falling coconut struck his head as he looked for a hubcap in a ditch. That sounded like such an idiotic way to die, I abandoned the hubcap, sprinted back to the safety of my van, and raced home.”
I often think of my friend’s story in the context of what price I am willing pay, or what I am ready to risk, to gain an objective. Translating a partial Bible into the Canela language, along with preparing educational materials and literacy teachers in the community was a great goal. Jo and I have never been sorry we spent thirty years in training, research, and translation to achieve that goal.
Yet, like my coconut-dodging friend, it is so easy for any of us to get ourselves into situations where the potential cost and risk are totally out of proportion to the value of the objective we are trying to achieve. Like a few months ago, I foolishly climbed up on a snow covered, steel roof to fix something. I reached out, lost my footing and next thing I knew, I was hanging on by one hand, my legs dangling out in space over hard ice and concrete, and I was yelling for Jo to come and set up the fallen ladder. Completing my objective was certainly not worth the risk of broken bones.
Some objectives, however, are worth risking much more than broken bones.
John G. Paton, 150 years ago, was one of the first missionaries to the New Hebrides islands in the Pacific where only nineteen years earlier, cannibals had killed and eaten two missionaries. One of the respected elders of his church advised Paton not to go, saying, “You’ll be eaten by cannibals!” But Paton pointed out that the elder was old, would soon die, and be laid in his grave, there to be eaten by worms. “In the resurrection it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by cannibals or by worms,” Paton said, adding he would rather die attempting to do a great thing for God and risk being eaten by cannibals, than to stay home and live a normal life and in the end be eaten by worms.
Young people talking with me often hesitate about committing themselves to a lifetime career in Bible translation, wondering if they should put off the decision for five or ten years. I usually say, “No matter what you decide to do now, you will continue to age at the same rate. Imagine two ten-years-from-now scenarios: one in which you are living a normal life at home, the other in which you are fully trained, and working towards providing the Word of God in the language of a people group that has never before understood the Good News.”
It costs to commit our lives to do great things for God, and there are unknown risks. It may not be cannibals or even coconuts, but the possibility of failure. American president Theodore Roosevelt referred to the cost in a speech he made one-hundred years ago. “The person who is in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again . . . who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst knows failure, at least fails while daring greatly . . .“
The apostle Paul described the attitude we should have about serving God, “I beg you to offer your bodies to God as a living sacrifice, pure and pleasing. That's the most sensible way to serve God” Romans 12:1 (CEV).
A ship captain tried to dissuade James Calvert, another early missionary to the New Hebrides, from going ashore by saying, “You will lose your life and the lives of those with you if you go among the cannibals of these islands.” Calvert, expressing Paul’s attitude, replied “We died before we came here.”
If we do not commit to spend our lives attempting something great for God, either at home or abroad, are we not just as foolish as my missionary friend?
We might as well risk death by coconut while looking for a hubcap in a ditch.
To Bring Him Glory, Jack Popjes (Wycliffe)
(reproduced with permission)
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