Love Letters from God
From UkrainianBible
As I do chores around the house, I like to listen to sermons from Emmanuel Lutheran in Columbus, Ohio. This morning the one I happened to pick up was on Transfiguration, from sometime back in February or March. But this morning happened to be Transfiguration–on the Eastern calendar. With all the books and tapes and CDs floating around in my inadequate office space, it worked out that on Transfiguration I "accidentally" got a Transfiguration sermon.
Actually, there have been so many coincidences of that kind that I think of them as little love letters from God.
Pastor Stolzenburg's sermon started with the love of God. One of the most famous theologians of the Twentieth Century said as he lay dying that the profoundest truth in theology was Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. And it's a fact that we know about God's love from Scripture alone. No other religion has this truth.
And yet, God encourages me to believe what Scripture says by little love letters–and when you're working alone in a foreign mission, believe me that's important.
One such was while we were visiting a missionary in Zimbabwe. In a store I saw exactly the zippered briefcase I wanted, and the price was right. Got it home and I couldn't use it. Had to give it to my son–because it had all three of his initials on the zipper. Odds against that happening? 17,576 to one. (He needed it more than I did, anyhow.)
In my first parish they joked that I was like God, invisible all week and then eternal on Sunday, but another time I really DID have to be like God, present in two places at once. Or rather, I absolutely had to find a post office and mail a package without being late for the plane. It was in a strange city, I had no cell phone or phone book, time was so short and consequences of failure would have been so bad that I prayed Please, God, let the next person I see know how to direct me there! At that moment a man walked out to his car. I stopped to ask and he said "I'm driving there right now. Follow me." Thank you, Lord.
One of the most striking was at the Black Sea where someone told me I could see Gorbachev's dacha across the bay. It was high on a bluff, and I could see clouds forming rapidly as the hot, onshore wind rose and hit the cooler air forty stories up. When I stood at the cliff edge, of course the first thing I noticed was Gorbachev's dacha. But I lost interest in his palace by looking down into the maelstrom of mist boiling up below my feet. Because the sun was behind me, my shadow fell onto the mist–and it was completely haloed by a rainbow.
A little love letter from God, that was, telling me how important my work of bringing Scripture to the former Soviet Union is.
Because only with an accurate modern translation of the Bible will Soviet citizens see the beauty and glory of Jesus transfigured before them–the way it happened in one last little love letter I'd like to tell you about.
This was on our own Transfiguration in August, and we were having an evening service at our church in Ternopil. Oddly for August, it had been gray all day, and I was preaching away about the transfiguration of Jesus. Usually I don't stand behind a pulpit–just use it to hold the Scriptures and a water glass–but this time I did. It came time to re-read the verse about His garments being whiter than any launderer could bleach them. I stepped forward in my white robe and at THAT VERY MOMENT a brilliant shaft of sunlight came through the window and I was, so to speak, transfigured before them in dazzling white.
Coincidence? Dumb luck? Or a little love letter from God?
