I take off my glasses to peer at my tiny notes in the wide margins of my ancient Bible. I type them into the computer and add new notes from what the Lord is currently teaching me about the passage.  I love being able to use online commentaries and lexicons.

So the other day I had a little while to spend with the Word of God.

I don’t know if you have this problem, but for me it can actually be a little while before my mind and heart even settle down enough to be able to focus and enjoy and receive the nourishment that my soul needs. This time I kept being distracted. I kept thinking of things I needed to write down, things I needed to check on. I was thinking, “Augh! I don’t have very long! I need to focus! Lord help me!”

My short time (it might have been twenty minutes or more) passed without much fruit. Or maybe not any. So I knew this was war.

If I say I’m not feeling well, my wonderful husband always wants me to go to bed early. So I wasn’t feeling well, I was tired and drained and feeling fragile, so as I have done in the past, I went to bed with my Bible, no computer, and a flashlight.  My plan? To read and sleep and read and sleep.

Under  the covers with a flashlight, I meditated on a paragraph in Philippians 3. “I count everything, all those amazing boasts from my past, to be detriment, impediments, junk that’s just in my way toward the real prize. I want the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.” Sleep, sleep. Lord teach me what this familiar Scripture means. Lord show me.

Wake up. Excellency of the knowledge of Christ. Excellency. Surpassing worthiness. Highest blessedness. All the things I thought were gain are simply an impediment.

Sleep.

Why don’t I do this more often? When I sleep the Word of God, it permeates my dreams.

So then Sunday we watched an amazing video, from Frontline Missions, about the church in Ethiopia. People with nothing (by American standards) were leaping in praise because of the matchless worthiness of the glorious Savior. His Excellency.

This is it. I saw it in action. It’s what Paul was doing in prison when he wrote the letter to the Philippians. It’s what these people were proclaiming. Nothing is greater, dearer, sweeter, higher, better than the love of Jesus Christ. Nothing.

Lord, continue to burn this into my heart.

It may not be much, but it’s a start. . . .

At the request of some students and educators, I’ve begun a Resources page (you can see the new link above). So far I’ve worked on the newest book, the one that’s fresh in my mind, pulling together internet resources to enhance the learning experience. They include such things as a National Geographic article from 1941 when the highland tribal people groups of (then) Dutch New Guinea were first discovered, to the World Team video made in 2010 that led me to write Witness Men.

It’s only a start, I know. But my publisher and I are putting our heads together for more ideas, so stay tuned!

Here’s a book worth reading. Don Richardson may use a hefty dose of imagination in explaining the “Unknown God” in the book of Acts, but his prose shines when he begins to describe modern-day tribal people and the legends and traditions that hark back to a great God whom they think they cannot know.

For these people—and we’re not talking about one or two isolated tribes, but many, many tribal groups scattered in different continents all over the world—when the true God of the Bible, Jesus Christ, is shown to be the God they’ve been waiting for through untold generations, the people embrace Christianity en masse. Mr. Richardson tells us a number of stories in detail, some from his own experiences in Irian Jaya (now called Papua, Indonesia), but also from Africa, the Indian subcontinent, east Asia, and more. And since the first publication of this book in 1981 (it has gone through multiple printings in its thirty years) even more missionaries have told him about evidence in the cultures where they have worked.

This book is especially meaningful to me, because when I first read it almost thirty years ago, I was inspired to want . . . someday .  . . to have the privilege of writing some of these amazing stories for children to read.

Years later, in 2007, an old cassette tape was placed in my hands that held some amazing stories that eventually resulted in a book. And then another set of stories came to me, resulting in another book. And then a video. And, though I didn’t know it at first, I came to discover that the video led me to the area where that man had worked who had originally inspired me, so many years ago.

Don Richardson’s mission work—the same work he talks about in Eternity in Their Hearts—is recounted in Witness Men: Stories of God at Work in Papua, Indonesia. It is a privilege to me to let others know about the ministry of the man who influenced me so long ago.