Like all good stories, there is a larger bundle from which they are briefly unraveled. I’ll try to tell this one like that. So, it’s hot here in Thailand. 114 degrees hot. And my wife now wants me to take her to the market ‘close by’ on the scooter. I can honesty say there are any number of things I’d rather do. But I also am getting better at recognizing the ‘road less traveled’, of being subject one to another (there’s one story for later).
So off we go, part of the time against the traffic (another story, AS for short), even going cross country through a field, parking the scooter in the shade, then up over the walking overpass over the ‘freeway’, into the market, and we take care of business.
Then back to the overpass on foot, down to the parked scooter and back to home. Except that there is this wobble.
Rear tire is flat. OK, character building time. I do OK. My poor wife is much more under physical duress than I am. But we have little choice. I push the scooter back towards our house, she walks. There is no talk. It’s hot. Did I say it’s hot?
As we come to the little cross road, an old guy is sitting on his scooter outside a little store, no shirt on, big gut. I immediately relate to him. I gesture to my flat tire. He laughs, and gestures for me to follow him. Good. I’m pretty good with gestures. And like I said, I relate to this guy…somehow. Meanwhile my wife is now on her own separate path (I did call a son to come get her, so I was being a good protector (AS).
So off we go, me following the shirtless old guy with the big gut, me pushing my scooter along, sweating…profusely. (I finally get to use that word correctly). Did I say it was hot? I, being the spiritual man that I am, am wondering what God thinks He’s doing. I might have even asked Him. But at least there’s this big Thai guy smiling. (Acutely, he was only maybe 5′ 2”). But then I can’t find him. Where did he go? I’m deep into an area that most tourists would never go, let alone see. (AS) And all of a sudden, there he is, signaling me to follow, way down an even smaller dirt road… I go further. Even more where nobody goes. I going to the end of the road (AS).
And there we are. At his ‘house’, and he begins to fix my flat. I watch. I marvel. I sweat.
I wait. I sense God at work doing something. And then I hear.
I know of what I hear. It is the mutterings of torment. They are unmistakable. Remember, I’m a psychiatric nurse. I listen. I watch. I wait. Yes, no doubt.
Well, maybe a little.
So I gesture to my new friend. And I do mean friend. He is clearly my kind of guy. My life is full of these men, with homemade welders, stacks of junk in their ‘yard’, ready at an instant to help, smiling at my ‘delemia’ (that was suppose to be ‘dilemma’, but for once I like the error better) as if it was just the normal ways of things, and are ready to help…if I just let them…ask them…follow them.
So I ask him (gesturing) that I hear the sounds of a man, in the nearby hut, seemingly locked in… muttering, howling, laughing… My friend smiles, gesturing back to me, making the universal sign of drinking too much alcohol, and the mind now being lost. And he smiles. I acknowledge my ‘understanding’. I ache. I debate. What can I do?
What does God want? Is this just another of the lost, slowly sinking into darkness? Just another soul, slipping ever deeper into the perishing torment of a Christless eternity? And why am I here, in this moment, with that little piece of wire being pulled from my tire, at the end of the road?
So I move, by faith. I gesture…to my new friend, sitting on a coffee can, working on my scooter. I show him that God is in me, that He is more powerful than the torment, the evil of despair and hopelessness, and the mutterings of any man in a locked hut, that I can and am going to ask Him to have mercy, to work His will in that man who is destroyed, waiting for nothing, at the end of the road, in the unbearable heat, amidst the dust and turmoil of useless junk, that holds only the barest of hope of purpose.
Yes! That’s what I’m made for! Here is what I came for! This is what 66 years of experience and living has prepared me for. I obeyed.
Face to face with the impossible.
And now it’s in His Hands. Where it should be, must be, and is.
My new friend smiled, and continued working. Then after having aired up my tire, pointed the way around the back, to our home, through the fields, over the dusty paths where none of my color had been I’m sure. And then it was over. Or had things just begun? But I’m back to the bundle of stories.
Are you listening? Thank you if you are. If not, well, someone is. I can guarantee that. Because I know Him personally.
And He hears every muttering of torment, no matter how far away it’s gone.
