If I Don't Praise Him...

“If they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” (Luke 19:40)

I just want to share this with you so that you can praise God with me for His goodness and mercy.

What a morning I had this past Wednesday!  It started with some exercise in the yard (trying to encourage my older son Jeremy to do the same). After that, it was a rush trying to get breakfast ready and prepare lunch for the boys to take to school and have some for Anthony and me. You see, Wednesday is the day I go to Tsevie (che-vee-ay, a town about 45 minutes away from where we live) for language study. I felt rushed but managed to leave the house and arrived at my language teacher’s house only a few minutes late. I had decided that it would be my last session with Kate. The reasons are that I really do not like driving on my own especially with the road being bad with lots of potholes and also, with Jonathan starting pre-school and at a later time than Jeremy and finishing early, it is hard to juggle time to have everything done. I had a good session with Kate, said my goodbye and was soon on my way home.

All the time that we’ve lived in Africa, we’ve always tried to remember to ask God for traveling mercies because we have seen a few too many wrecks on the road!  I know that if it were not for His mercy, I might not be here today.

I was driving back from Kate’s, about three-fourths of the way home, and was about to pass a trailor truck that was parked on the other side of the road when I saw two more large trucks coming from the opposite direction.  When they were about 100 meters away, I saw the second truck attempting to overtake the truck in front. I was hoping that the driver of the second truck would stop overtaking when he saw my vehicle but to my dismay, he kept on coming. I realized that there will not be space on the 2 lane road (with a parked truck on the other side) so I tried to go as close to the edge of the road as possible.  He overtook the truck in front but because of the parked truck on his side of the road he cut into my side of the road and “squeezed” in between the parked truck and my vehicle, almost pushing me off the road. I saw my side mirror being pushed in and then heard the sound of scraping metal. By then we had both stopped. I was scared, but I was more upset than anything at the driver for his reckless driving. Praise the Lord that I was unharmed and the vehicle had only some scratches. Since it would be too time consuming to try to make a police report, and seeing that there wasn’t much damage done, I went on my way.

As if that incident weren’t enough, when I reached Tabligbo, and as I turned into our road, I got stuck in the mud. The rain over the past few days has made mud of the newly graded road. Anyway, with help from some people who were on the road, I was able to get out of the mud and drove on to the school to pick up Jonathan.  I had called Anthony and he soon joined me at the school after having walked most of the way before catching a motorcycle taxi.  It was such a relief to see him and to be back safe and sound. May God bless our going out and coming in. Praise Him.

Keep It Flowing

It was one of those days that I’ve just come to accept as part and parcel of living here in Tabligbo, Togo.  The power went off sometime during the morning. And then the water came in little spurts before it stopped completely. “They must be working on the power line and so the pump isn’t working to pump the water. Hope it will not be a whole day affair,” I thought.

Before too long, the power was restored but the water came back for only a few seconds and then stopped again. It was a little frustrating at first, as it was my baking day and there were quite a lot of dishes and utensils to be washed.  Anyway, we do have some barrels of water for such an occasion and so, out went the bucket to be filled and brought back to the house. The bucket had to be filled a few times during the course of the day but I was fine and did not think too much of it.  By late afternoon, when the water situation remained the same, I decided to check with my teammates to see whether their water was out too. Somehow, by then, I had the nagging feeling that something was not quite right. When they told me that they had water, I knew that it may be our line. Anyway, I decided to go out and check on our water pipe by the meter.  It did not surprise me too much when I found the main faucet turned off. The minute I turned it on, there was water coming out from the faucets in the house! Some little fingers had turned it off and on questioning my younger son, Jonathan, (he was playing outside the house the whole morning with his friends), he reluctantly admitted that he did it but stressed that it was an “aksidone.” After receiving the admonition that he should not play with the faucet any more, he went back happily to his play, glad that he was not punished.

It occurred to me that I had gone almost the whole day without water in the house from the faucets, not because there was no water but that the main faucet was turned off.  I can’t help but think of the many times that I have gone “dry” because I did not turn on the faucet of the Living Water. Our Lord Jesus said that He is the Living Water and anyone who drinks from Him will never be thirsty.

The ladies on our team are doing the Beth Moore study,” Believing God” and something she said made me think of what happened above. “God is so much more than we have yet acknowledged and experienced. He is capable of tremendously more than we have witnessed. I have become utterly convinced that we see so little because we believe Him for so little.” “We receive not because we ask not”, James said.

May we stop every now and then to check our lives and see that we have not, by accident or on purpose, shut off the flow of the Living Water.