“Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways; re-clothe us in our rightful mind, in purer lives thy service find, in deeper reverence praise.”
It’s June 1955, and I am sitting with my family in our usual spot, 6 rows from the front on the north side of Immanuel Lutheran Church in Altona, Illinois. It has been a tough spring for me. After years of fighting horrible bouts of tonsillitis compounded by ear infections and vertigo, I finally weathered a tonsillectomy two months ago. Now my throat has finally healed enough for me to swallow rough food without wincing, and I feel healthy for the first time in years.
Outside, birds are singing in the maple trees that surround our lovely church. Inside, I gaze on the triptych above the altar, one figure of Jesus the good shepherd on the left, Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane on the right, and Jesus ascending into heaven in the biggest picture of all in the middle. I have no idea how many times I will gaze on those pictures through the years or how much they will come to mean to me. Even now in the stillness of the night, I meditate on those pictures and marvel at the goodness of my Lord. As I sit with my parents, I can hear my mother’s clear soprano reinforced by my dad’s tenor as we enter the second verse.
“In simple trust like theirs who heard, beside the Syrian sea, the gracious calling of the Lord, let us, like them, without a word rise up and follow thee.”
As I listen to these words, I have no inkling that God will call me into the mission field at age eleven, that I will commit my life to Christ at the age of fifteen, that I will train as a general and pediatric surgeon, or that I will come to northern Ghana, where I will spend the rest of my life. Have I ever regretted saying “Yes” to Jesus? NO! NO! A MILLION TIMES NO! Even if I knew all the suffering I would endure, I would never refuse. Jesus has blessed me beyond measure, and nothing is too much to give up for my Lord.
“O Sabbath rest by Galilee! O calm of hills above, where Jesus knelt to share with thee the silence of eternity, interpreted by love!”
My brothers and I feel loved and protected. Today, we will finish church and Sunday School and return home to a scrumptious home-made dinner. We have our own animals butchered and grow most of our own vegetables. My grandparents may join us, in which case, Grandma will bring her delicious butterhorn rolls, fit for the angels. The early strawberries are ready, and we are having strawberry pie for dessert. In the afternoon, my parents will visit and rest while we kids play ball in our large yard. We do not do farm work on Sundays, apart from caring for our animals.
“Drop thy still dews of quietness, till all our strivings cease; take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy peace.”
Our lives are ordered and quiet. Most of our trading is done in small towns no more than seven miles away; otherwise, we only go to town for church and school. We still have the same ancient phone system that was brought in fifty years ago, with the switchboard in Oscar Johnson’s house in Altona. I attend school in the same building from which my dad graduated from high school. Everybody in town knows everybody else, and while this might seem intrusive, we care about one another. A general line ring of four long rings will bring out help for any emergency. Social media is unknown and even movies are an infrequent treat. We spend much of our free time playing games or reading, and we keep a local library busy with our patronage.
“Breathe through the heats of our desire thy coolness and thy balm; let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still small voice of calm.’”
As we are singing this last verse, my family has no idea that in three short weeks our world will be turned upside down. My father will be severely injured in a near-fatal head-on collision at the Walnut Creek bridge just west of town. Dad’s injuries will be so severe that he will actually have a near-death experience in which he will see his grandparents and great-grandparents in heaven before being called back into his body by my mother’s fervent prayers. Dad will be bed-bound for several weeks and then remain on crutches for several months thereafter. We will get our first TV so Dad has something with which to entertain himself while he’s stuck in bed. The disruption of our lives will eventually convince my parents that my mother should return to school and complete her Bachelor’s degree so that she can teach and help stabilize the family income. We will also abandon our milking operation, retaining only one or two cows to provide milk for my grandparents and us.
I am remembering that Sunday as I return from rounds on the Children’s Ward and the NICU at the Hospital in Saboba. It’s far hotter here than it ever gets in Illinois, even in the depths of August. Rounds have kept me too long for me to make one of the local church services, so I sit here remembering and contemplating those magnificent words penned by the Quaker writer, John Greenleaf Whittier, so long ago. And once more I hear voices of all those church members in Altona, those in the choir and those beloved Sunday School teachers who humbly gave their Sundays to teach wiggly little kids and blaze teen-agers.
Nothing done in love for a child is ever wasted. I’m sure many of my Sunday School teachers went home from church wondering if they had made any impact on the kids they were teaching. The same thing might be said for those teaching vacation Bible school. While I can’t speak for anyone else, I will gladly stand before God and testify that I am eternally grateful for the sacrifices made by these teachers. Whether or not they realized it, they did find purer lives in the services they rendered. Whether or not these people realized it, they were agents of peace and servants of God. And I stand to bless every one of them. Now in my 77th year, I continue to pray the prayers embodied in these verses, and I say with Mr. Whittier, “Breathe through the heats of our desire thy coolness and thy balm; let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still small voice of calm.’”
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