Painful experience prompts question
“What would you do if you thought you only had a few hours to live?” missionary Dan Bryant asked after a very painful experience.
Dan and his three oldest children recently went out with friends from the village to collect some wild honey. They’d seen it done many times before and Dan worked up the courage to try it.
“You go right after dusk, when the bees have ‘calmed down,’” Dan wrote. “In this case, the hive was in a hollow section of a tree just a few feet off the ground, which made things easier. The process is simple – you light a small bundle of hay, which you wave in the hole to smoke out the bees, then you reach in and pull out the combs.”
The family ended up with a bucket full of honey comb, but Dan suffered more than 15 bee stings.
“Our kids watched from a distance so they did not get stung more than once each,” Dan wrote. “It was all exciting. But it was also more stings than I have had in my whole life put together. So the next few hours were not too pleasant with swelling, turning red and general discomfort. Our Benadryl got some good use.”
Dan’s wife, Ginny, didn’t sleep well that night as she monitored Dan’s breathing. The next morning Dan’s language helper appeared all swollen. He too had gone out for honey.
The sobering experience caused Dan to think about “How you would prepare for death, if you knew you were about to die?” He asked this question to a couple of Landuma people and the answers saddened him. His language helper mentioned two specific things.
One is to ask the local religious leaders to come and pray for you, partly for healing, but the language helper stressed in particular for forgiveness in the afterlife.
The second thing is to ask your wives and children for forgiveness, and you forgive them. The belief is that if another person does not forgive your sin against them before you die, then God cannot forgive either. If there is no forgiveness, you must suffer for it, often by having your pain prolonged before death.
“Interestingly, neither of the people I asked said anything about telling your family that you love them or will miss them,” Dan wrote. “It is sad to see the bondage that people live under when it comes to being unsure of forgiveness.”
Please pray that the Bryants will make good diligent progress in their culture and language acquisition in the next couple of months so they will “be able to clearly share the assurance of forgiveness that Jesus has made available to all.”