Isn't there one person in Eugene who will help me with my orphans?"

“Isn’t there one person in Eugene who will help me with my orphans?”

The farmer and lumberman from Creswell listened to the speaker plead.  He had arrived late to the meeting and was forced to sit, with his large family, way in the front in the only seats left in the high school auditorium.  They watched as the guest speaker showed several films detailing the plight of persecuted Christians and thousands of illegitimate “GI babies,” turned out into the streets, in post-war Korea.  The farmer’s wife fought back tears as the movies depicted the slaughter of Korean pastors by a brutal regime.  The couple sat, tense and motionless, as they watched footage of desperate children.  The farmer’s wife knew that every scene had cut her husband “like a knife.”  Of that evening, she wrote years later:

There is so much we had never known. We had never thought of such suffering and heartbreak. We had never heard of such poverty and despair. We had never seen such emaciated arms and legs, such bloated starvation-stomachs and such wistful little faces searching for someone to care.

The farmer and his wife were Harry and Bertha Holt, from Oregon’s central valley.  They went on to found what would become Holt International, an organization that would be responsible for the care and adoption of thousands of poor children.  In her story, “The Seed From the East,” Bertha Holt recalls,

After we retired [from farming], Harry and I continued to talk of the shocking things we had seen..”You know, Bertha…when Dr. Pierce asked for someone to help, I felt like going up and saying ‘Here am I!’ I could hardly keep from doing it. But I knew he wouldn’t want an old wreck like me with a big scar on my heart. And… I have so many ties to keep me here…my family…my farm.  I know I can’t type, or so dome of those other things he mentioned, but I could carry out ashes.  I could help take care of those poor miserable babies.  Every picture I saw made me want to help.”  “I know,” I said.  “I had exactly the same feeling myself.

Who was that speaker?  Who was the Dr. Pierce whose speech, and whose movies, so motivated the Holts that the productive balance of the rest of their lives would be given to the care of “the least of these” (Matthew 25:40)?

It was the same Dr. Pierce who I described at the beginning of last week’s sermon.  The Bob Pierce who was used of God to found international relief organizations like World Vision and Samaritan’s Purse, even as his life – and that of his family – was destroyed.  Dr. Pierce’s vision for ministry clouded his priorities so that his marriage and children took a back seat to his work – never God’s plan – and the result was a dysfunctional family, a broken marriage, a daughter’s suicide, and more.

Nonetheless, God works.  That’s the way He is.  Graciously, patiently, He accomplishes what He wills, through people like us.  In spite of people like us!

This Sunday, as I continue the series on Endurance aimed at Dads and grads - but useful for everyone who walks by faith – we’ll look at what is perhaps the Bible’s second-best example of how God works in spite of our stumbling, and is always faithful.

Remember, it doesn’t matter what your start was like. It doesn’t matter how you’ve run thus far.

What matters is how you finish.  Let’s finish well. 

See you this Sunday, d.v.

Pastor Dale