Comfort from Above

Haze hung like a thin gray blanket over Manila. Although it was only 6:30 a.m., I knew the day would be another hot, humid one -- my blouse was already sticking to me. Dreading the trip ahead of me, I wished I could make the nightmare of the past few days vanish by closing my eyes.

Weaving in and out of traffic, our Filipino driver was taking my co-worker, Helena, and me to the bus station. Three lanes of traffic on our side of the divider became five lanes, with people squeezing in between the lane markings. This was as unnerving to me now as it had been when our family arrived in the Philippines five months earlier to do mission work. An occasional honk of a horn indicated a driver was claiming the right of way.

I settled back against the seat, my mind whirling with the events of the past few days. I hadn't slept well for several nights and my body was running on adrenaline.

My husband, Dennis, had spent several days in the modern Manila Heart Hospital, undergoing tests for the shortness of breath and chest pains he was experiencing. Doctors discovered that his previous heart damage from rheumatic fever twenty years earlier had now doubled.

The cardiologist's words ran through my mind like a continuous tape loop: Atrial fibrillation. Sixty percent leakage past the mitral valve. Congestive heart failure. Fluid in the lungs. A dangerously enlarged heart.

The cardiologist had told Dennis he needed surgery within a month, or he would face certain death. Even now she didn't know if the surgery would be successful because the damage was so bad. She offered no promises, gave no guarantees.

Today's bus trip would take me back to the little barrio (community) of Lantap, 180 miles north of Manila where we had been living for the past five weeks. We had been learning Ilocano, one of the national languages of the Philippines. I needed to pack up all of the belongings we had left behind when we hurriedly came to Manila for tests at the heart hospital.

My thoughts drifted to Dennis, my husband of ten years, and our two children who were staying in the mission guest house in Manila while I was making my three-day trip. Dennis would be spending most of his time resting while other people watched Tim, six, and Rachel, three.

Lord, be with them today; keep them safe.

Over the past few days I had looked at dozens of Bible verses on peace and comfort. I had been praying constantly, but God's peace still eluded me. My one question was: would I be a widow at thirty-nine?

Lord, I know You want me to trust You, but I'm finding it hard. You'll have to help me. I'm so afraid. Don't let Dennis die.

"I recognize that corner," said Helena, seated next to me. Her words jolted me back to the present. "The bus station will be on our right in about three blocks." Helena had been staying in the guest house in Manila while on a shopping trip and would now be traveling back on the same bus with me.

True to Helena's words, our driver soon pulled into the bus yard. We had purchased our tickets the previous day to avoid the long lines in the bus station where hundreds of people were milling around.

I got my small suitcase out of the trunk and turned to Helena. "I'm so glad you'll be on the bus with me. I don't think I could find the right bus by myself."

"It's not really that difficult once you've traveled the distance as many times as I have. Over there is the bus we want," she said, indicating one in a long line of buses. "It's the one marked Banaue."

We climbed the bus steps. Since we were early, we had our choice of seats and found two toward the back.

The 180-mile trip ahead of us would take between seven and nine hours with many stops along the way. The road through the mountains of Luzon had numerous hairpin turns and was occasionally blocked by rock-slides after typhoons. All scenery along the way looked as if it could be made into picture postcards, but today I wasn't really interested in sight seeing.

I closed my eyes, feeling exhausted. I was trying so hard to trust God, but the anxious thoughts kept crowding my mind. Lord, show me that You are with me in a tangible way. Help me trust You.

Other passengers were now beginning to fill the bus. I looked up just as two young men entered. One was carrying a guitar and both had a lapel pins. As they came closer, I could see one pin read "Trust God" and the other was a cross within a fish. Were they Christians?

In the Philippines, many people are outwardly religious, without any depth of personal faith. Often religious symbols are used for good luck. However, these pins seemed genuinely Christian.

Finding seats directly in front of us, the two men turned around to greet us. They knew English well.

"Are the two of you with SIL?" asked the younger man.

"Yes. How did you know?" I asked, shocked that we could be so easily identified in a city of 20 million people. How had they heard of SIL, the Bible translation organization with which Helena and I were working?

"You don't look like tourists because you don't have a camera around your neck. You're not dressed like tourists," was their response.

The Filipino man of Chinese descent explained he was Pastor Lim from a small church about forty miles beyond where we were going. He had met someone from SIL on his previous travels on the bus.

Pastor Lim's traveling companion introduced himself as Rogel. He said he worked with a mission in Banaue.

Helena settled back in her seat with a magazine, while I continued my conversation with Pastor Lim. He talked about how he was the first in his Buddhist family to become a Christian, and how the rest of his family rejected him and his choice of occupation.

I told him that I had a husband and two children who were staying in the mission guest house in Manila.

"If you have a family, why are you traveling alone?" he asked.

"My husband has a serious heart condition. I need to go back and pack up our things." Conversation with this gentleman came easily. "God wants me to trust Him, but I'm afraid my husband might die," I said, wiping tears from my eyes with a tissue.

"God loves you very much and is watching over your family," Pastor Lim replied with certainty. "Your husband will be all right." For the next hour Pastor Lim turned around in his seat and lovingly shared Scripture and God's comfort with me. Then he prayed with me.

God's peace, which had been eluding me, flooded over me. I felt His presence in this encounter with this stranger in a way I never had before.

Thanks Lord, for showing me you care for me. Now I trust You.

As I thought about this incident shortly afterward, questions raced through my mind. Just who were these two men? How had they chosen seats directly in front of us? How did they know who we were? A Bible verse from Hebrews then came to mind. "Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it" (Hebrews 13:2 NIV).

What do angels look like? The description in Hebrews isn't of white-robed winged beings, but angels who could be mistaken for human beings. Did I have an angel encounter? If I enquired in the towns where they worked, would I find that no one had ever met Rogel or Pastor Lim?

When I reached the bamboo house in Lantap, I packed everything we owned back into the crate we had brought from the U.S. Then I returned to Manila by bus three days later. Because Dennis's survival was uncertain, we decided to go back to the United States for the surgery. There we would be surrounded by our families.

Heart damage in the U.S. was rated 1 to 4, with 4 being the most serious. Doctors ranked Dennis as 4 plus. However, true to Pastor Lim's prediction, Dennis came through the surgery well. The mechanical valve that clicks in his chest is still working seventeen years later. He has had no further heart problems.

In the years that have passed, I've often thought about the incident on the bus. Were the strangers who they said they were . . . or had I entertained angels? Of one thing I am certain -- it was no coincidence. My two "angels" were sent by God with a message of love and comfort when I desperately needed it.

[ by: Janet Seever Copyright © 2002 (jseever1@shaw.ca) -- submitted by: Janet Seever ]