From the Archive

Because tomorrow at sundown begins another Yom Teruah (Day of Blowing), I thought I would repost something I wrote a couple years ago relating to this day. It was one of those "aha moments" for me in the desert. Maybe it will speak to you as well.

I had a memorable experience as I was making my way back to the US from Kenya. I needed to get to Nairobi from the remote area where I had been, which was about 16 hours by land vehicle, but only about 3 hours by plane. A Mission Aviation Fellowship plane made a stop every Tuesday and Friday at Korr. The missionary I was visiting had one of the ambulance drivers take me to catch the 6-seater propeller plane. He drove me two hours in the sand and heat to Korr.

I was told that the plane could arrive anytime between 11 am and 1 pm (typically). We (the ambulance driver and I) got to Korr a little before 11 am. For the first 20 minutes or so, the driver took care of a couple errands and I visited with someone I had met a year earlier. I was a little nervous because I didn’t know exactly where the plane would land, and I didn’t want to be preoccupied with something else when it came. My driver assured me that we would know when the plane arrived. Nevertheless, I told the driver that I wanted to wait close to the airstrip. He drove me to a Catholic compound, which was right next to the airstrip and where there was some shade. We sat and waited. I looked in the direction of the "runway," or where I was told it was. It just looked like a flat open space of sand right next to another flat open space of sand. Cattle were walking along a path near it.

As I sat in the dusty heat in a Toyota Land Cruiser ambulance waiting for the little propeller plane to appear in the clouds, I began to doubt. Airplanes in the northern desert of Kenya are not a common sight. The only things I saw in the sky were a few clouds, birds, dust, and the hot sun. I kept watching the sky while I listened for an airplane. I started to wonder if it was really going to come. You never know in Africa what type of delays can take place and there is no fast or reliable way to communicate a delay in that part of the country. What an unlikely place for an airplane to land--in the middle of the desert. Still, there shouldn't have been much reason to doubt since I arrived in the same place two weeks prior in a plane operated by the same organization. It was only 12:20, so it was still within the expected arrival time, but for some reason, I was really starting to worry. How long would I wait? What if it got to be 2, 3, or 4 pm and it hadn’t arrived yet? At what time would I decide to quit waiting? Then what would I do?

I started thinking about how much faith it required for me to believe that the plane would actually arrive. It was much more difficult to believe it here in the desert than at “real airports” where monitors list the expected arrival time and gate agents assure customers that the plane is coming. This time I was trusting the word of a person I talked to a week earlier on a satellite phone.

As I sat there and looked at the sky, I realized that it was just a few days before Yom Teruah or Day of Blowing (Sept 2006), where we look forward to the day when the trumpet will sound, the whole world will hear it, and the Lord will return in the clouds. I was actively listening & looking at the sky waiting for a plane...do I wait and watch as intently for the Lord to return? Do I believe God's Word that the Messiah is coming again? How often do I grow impatient and start thinking that maybe He really isn’t coming?

Suddenly, the driver said, "It's coming. I hear the plane!" I didn’t hear anything. But as I listened I started to hear it. The driver heard it much sooner than I did because his ear was trained to hear the plane. In a similar way, I want my ear well-trained to hear the Lord.

I was reminded of these verses:
“But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace.” (2Pe 3:8-14 ESV)