Advancing In A Different Direction

We all have heard the cliché “three steps forward and two steps backward,” which jumps into our brains at those times when we just cannot make steady progress forward!  For the Christ-follower who yearns for the Lord’s leading in their life, there may come days when we indeed may feel that we have made a U-turn and are now headed in exactly the wrong direction. 

The Merton Prayer’s powerful promise that we can have confidence we are being led on the “right road” even though we “may know nothing about it” gives me comfort regularly.  I read recently about a United Nations General during the Korean War whose troops were being run over by the Chinese.  Instead of announcing to the press covering the war that his U.N. troops were retreating, he said we are Advancing In A Different Direction.  I love that!   It so accurately describes how God can lead us on the right path EVEN though it is clearly a different direction than what we had planned on following.

In 1979 Chester Bitterman was a young recent Bible College graduate who signed up to attend Wycliffe’s Summer Institute of Linguistics and become a Bible translator.  He felt called to the South American country of Colombia, a country beset with strife and serious internal struggles for many years. He and his young wife moved into the Wycliffe headquarters in Bogota in 1981.  One day armed guerillas attacked the Wycliffe headquarters and kidnapped Chester after telling witnesses, “If Wycliffe is not out of Colombia in a month you will never see this man alive again.”

American newspapers and news stations regularly reported on the missionary who was lost in Colombia with pleas from the U.S. government for Chester to be returned.  Seven weeks after he was kidnapped his body was found in a school bus with a bullet in his chest.  He was a martyr and his testimony for the Kingdom of God lives on today.  The most amazing headline of all read, “Bitterman’s Mother says ‘This was God’s will’.”  Seriously?  I hear of this position by a mother who had just lost her 28-year-old son and I am at once flabbergasted and comforted. 

Flabbergasted since Chester’s death was obviously NOT the plan for his life.  Comforted since Chester’s death as a martyr did indeed send a powerful message.  And then in my “comfort” reaction, I hear the U.N. General’s Advancing In A Different Direction.  The murder of a 28-year-old future Bible translator could hardly be what God wanted for Chester, right?  I preached last Sunday in my home parish, and I shared this story of Chester’s martyrdom.  We would hardly be aware of him or honoring his life some forty years after his death, had this awful and evil event not taken his life in 1981.  His mother’s confidence is so powerful and encouraging, even when events in our life seem exactly the opposite of what God intends.  I am going to spend some future energy watching for how God works in my life, characterized by my Advancing In A Different Direction.

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