Writings By Phil

Have you ever risked your life for something?   Yes, you have!  Just getting out of bed in the morning is a risk, but we do it anyway! Driving your car brings potential for injury or death, especially if you drive Interstate 4 here in Florida.  We never know what our day will bring forth.

I think of the collapse of the condo building back in July of 2021 in South Florida – those people didn’t go to bed thinking, “Tonight, I’m going to meet my Maker!”  However, ready, or not, ninety-eight of them did!

A co-worker of mine was riding his motorcycle to work, obeying all the rules of the roads.  Someone ran a stop sign and t-boned him, breaking his jaw and an eye socket, detaching the retina in same eye, giving him a concussion and other scrapes and bruises on his body.  He did not wake up that morning thinking, “This is good day to be in a wreck!” Thankfully, he survived  and is again at work, though limited in doing somethings because of his loss in eyesight.

Then there was the Florida man who was asleep in bed, when a sinkhole opened beneath his house and swallowed the floor of his bedroom, taking his bed, with him still in it, into a watery grave. Clothes and other things hanging on the walls were not disturbed. His body was never recovered! Even sleeping can be risky!

We are not in control of what happens in our lives and, often, don’t even think that our day may contain great risk to life and limb.  When it happens, we must trust in the One who is working all things out for our good! That is easier said than done, I know, but that is walking by faith!

However, there are times in life when we do make conscience decisions that may present danger in our lives.  Dave Yarwood made such a decision on September 5, 1951.  I question why he went by himself, but I wasn’t there, and I don’t have all the facts.  I do know he had a great desire to share the love of Jesus with a jungle people group called the Nhambiguaras Indians.  They lived on the boarder of Brazil and Bolivia.  On that fateful day, Dave risked all and gave all for the cause of Christ.

Some tax collectors, traveling the river, spotted Dave’s body on a sandbar.  They told Dave’s co-workers and they rushed to the scene to find Dave’s body full of arrows.

The arrow that I hold in my hand in the picture is one of the arrows that was pulled from Dave’s body.  In redecorating the lobby of our old building, or in our move to the tower location, this artifact was thrown out.  My co-worker rescued it before it hit the dumpster, and now it hangs in our maintenance office.  He thought it good to remember, to be reminded, of the risk and sacrifice that many have made to see the Gospel taken to the ends of the earth.  I agree!

How much risk are we willing to take to see the Gospel advanced to the ends of the earth?  As I contemplate the risk from my comfort zone here in the States, I am reminded of a quote by Jim Elliot.  He was a missionary martyred by the Auca Indians in Ecuador back in the early 1950’s.  On October 28, 1949 he wrote in his journel, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”