God's wondrous protection (part 3)

Grandpa’s words continue in the final segment of the section he titled: God’s Wondrous Protection in Times of Danger. In the last post he talked about being delivered from a horse accident which had him lying in a ravine with his horse on top of him. This one is about snakes!

On our station in Yagoua we had several experiences with poisonous snakes. The Egyptian Cobra is very dangerous. He tries to climb into places, perhaps mostly for his own protection, but in so doing he gets into places where it is hard to see him. Most of our belongings we have had to lock up so we have storerooms that we place our things in. In these storerooms we have a lot of boxes or cases, sometimes piled ceiling high; usually these rooms are dark because there are no windows.

Once, when going into the store room, not thinking of any danger, I reached across some of these boxes and cases only to discover a cobra raising his ugly head toward my hand, but his neck was too short to reach it. This was indeed a direct intervention by God. I went out of the storeroom thanking God for His protection and called the servants to kill the serpent.

Another time I went into this same storeroom looking for something, once again not expecting anything out of the ordinary. This time, one of these spitting cobras spit right in my face. The nationals say that the spit of this cobra is poisonous but I don’t believe so. I just ran out of the storeroom, washed my face and went on with my work.

I do not tell these stories to scare young people from going to Africa and becoming missionaries; neither to show what missionaries have to go through, but rather to show what a marvelous God and Father we Christians have, that we can depend upon His ever present care for us.

I just had an interesting typo, as I was typing the last paragraph above. Instead of “depend," the word in Grandpa's original manuscript was a bit smudged and I first typed “spend.” When I realized I had it wrong and was correcting it, I couldn’t help but think about how “spend” could fit. If, in fact, I do believe (and I do) that we have a marvelous God and Father who continuously cares for us, can I “spend” that care and step out a bit (or a lot) more boldly into the world? Or do I have a storehouse of His wondrous care at my disposal and sheepishly conserve it, staying in the safest place I can find? I’m fond of safety – so was Grandpa, I’m sure - yet who do I credit as the source of my safety? Or to what location? Or to what item or items? If the source is a who, and the who is God, am I not safe wherever I go, even if facing down an Egyptian Cobra? (I pray that is never one of my challenges…)

God' protection of me will continue until He brings me home, where I’m safest, forever. The next post will talk more about this...