This week I taught on God working even when we don’t see it. Here’s an example I gave from my time on the mission field where the invisible hand of God was moving on our behalf.
I remember one time, a number of years ago, we were flying from Florida in a large C47 aircraft into Columbia. We stopped in Bogota to refuel. We were headed to a mission base called Loma Linda.
In 1979 the Sandinistas overthrew the Nicaraguan government, and there were splinters of this terrorist group that moved into Venezuela and over into Columbia, however we didn’t know that.
Loma Linda was located in the dense, dense jungle region. When flying there, we had to fly off of a radio beam. They didn’t have radar, and we didn’t have GPS at that time. So a tall tower, either on a mountain or in the clearing, sends out a frequency and you turn according to what your air map says into that frequency and it’ll take you right where you need to go. Well, everything was going really well out of Bogota. We were about 30 minutes out of Bogota, 100-150 miles away, when all of a sudden the radio beam went dead.
Lost
Now, we’ve got nothing below us but the jungle. Everything looks the same. I was looking around trying to find something that was familiar, but I had never flown in that area. I took out the air chart, a map, and I’m looking for a river that I can’t see yet. The crosswinds were probably 50 miles an hour, and we were getting pushed off course. I’m still trying to tune in the radio beam, but it still wasn’t coming in. I finally saw a river that looked like what I was seeing on the air chart, so we followed that river. At this point, we are probably 80 to 90 miles off course. One mile is bad enough in the jungle, but 80 or 90 miles off course!
All of a sudden the radio bean came back on. Hallelujah! We corrected our course, got back in line, and headed to the mission base. We were almost an hour and a half, two hours late of our planned arrival time when we landed.
When we landed, one of the other missionaries came out and said, “You just missed it.” Missed what? He began to tell us about a terrorist group connected to the Sandinistas that had just come through. The whole base had to hide. The terrorists stole two vehicles, a small airplane, and they were looking for anybody they could kill. Had we landed on time, we would’ve been right in the middle of that.
Sounds to me like God was working even though we didn’t see it. I love the invisible hand of God!
Want to read about more times God was working even though it was thought He wasn’t? Go here.