We were “supposed” to get on a plane to go to the States by May 1st. We were planning to be there in person for my dad’s 65th birthday. We were looking forward to a relaxing few months together of summer splash-pools, children’s museums, and breathing in the beauty of the Shenandoah Valley.
Except we didn’t get on the plane. We never even bought the tickets.
We are still in Indonesia.
As fellow expats reading this, my guess is you can relate to the reality that we often feel torn between worlds. We sometimes need to change our plans. We have to learn to be flexible. Often, we wish to be in two places at once. We feel like we need to be on both sides of the world!
In this recent case for our family, our plans to the States were interrupted by rumors connected to policemen and government officials visiting our neighborhood. The slum community where we have been living and serving for over a decade seems to be under threat of a coming eviction and demolition. How could we dare get on a plane when the community we have poured our hearts into could be destroyed in the coming weeks?
When I joined Servants fifteen years ago, I knew that eviction was a reality faced by slum communities around the world. I have already experienced the heartbreak of one such eviction, which I wrote about in my first book Beyond Our Walls. But as we served year after year in this “new” slum community, we have been lulled into feeling safe from any such threat.
Yet there are no guarantees. In fact, part of the definition of a slum community is lacking “security of tenure.”1 In other words, slum communities are housing with insecure residential status.
It is one thing to know this in my head; it is quite another to have to explain it to my two boys before we go to sleep at night. This place where we have grown our family, where we have planted a mango tree and now eat the sweet fruit, where we have laughed and cried and wrestled with God — will it all really become a pile of rubble? Will God really allow that?
Perhaps a younger version of myself would have answered confidently: “Surely eviction will not happen!! God will protect our ministry. He will protect the poor and downtrodden. Not a stone will fall. God will miraculously intervene.”
But I find myself sure now that those prior statements are not where the answer lies. Regardless of whether we are evicted or not, the Lord is in control. “Our ministry,” “our plans,” “our dreams” can all too easily become an idol. In fact, the image of God I create can become an idol. God is bigger than what I can believe. God is greater than any theology I can box Him into. God is God.
And I am not.
Yes, I still firmly believe that the Lord cares for the poor and downtrodden. I cling to the truth that God loves my neighbors more than I can, that He desires what is best for them. But we live in a broken world, full of sin and corruption. The love of money has power over the hearts of many people — those in government halls of power and those in slum communities, too.
As I have wrestled in prayer these past months, I continue to pray that the Lord will sustain us. A song by Rend Collective is very appropriate at such a time as this:
Lord, whatever comes
Make me steadfast, make me rooted
A cedar planted firm, deeply grounded in Your goodness
Whatever comes
Lord, whatever comes
Be my bedrock, keep me steady
Loyal to Your throne, whatever stands against me
Whatever comes
Be my bravery when I am trembling
Be my courage when my heart is caving in
Be the fireside when I am wandering
Be my Father, whatever comes2
Living overseas is full of opportunities to grow in trusting God. Our trust is not that the Lord will keep difficult things from happening to us and those we love. Rather, the invitation is to embrace the promise that Jesus is with us in the valley, even when we are in the midst of the unknowns and the unsettling.
And that some day, all will be made right.
I have been obsessed with Amy Carmichael for many years, reading all her books that I could get my hands on (and inspiring the writing of my second book: Downward Discipleship: How Amy Carmichael Gave Me Courage to Serve in a Slum. However, now that I have run out of Amy books to read, I have recently turned to another author who also loved Amy’s writing: Elisabeth Elliott.
In her book These Strange Ashes, Elliott tells profound stories from her first year serving in Ecuador before she was married. She worked for months with a language friend Don Macario, who was helping teach her the Colorado language for Bible translation. One morning she heard a commotion outside and received news that Macario had been shot and murdered by land thugs. The only person she knew who could speak both Spanish and the Colorado language now lay murdered– he had been such an answer to prayer all these months.
How could God have let this happen?
Elisabeth described it as:
Lesson One for me in the school of faith. That is, it was my first experience of having to bow down before that which I could not possibly explain. Usually we need not bow. We can simply ignore the unexplainable because we have other things to occupy our minds. We sweep it under the rug. We evade the questions. Faith’s most severe tests come not when we see nothing but when we see a stunning array of evidence that seems to prove our faith vain. If God were God, if He were omnipotent, if He had cared, would this have happened?
She went on to quote a poem from Amy Carmichael:
But these strange ashes, Lord, this nothingness,
This baffling sense of loss?
Son, was the anguish of my stripping less
Upon the torturing cross?3
Somehow when all does not go according to our plan, when we are stranded in unknowns and heartbreaks, we are invited to trust God and to offer ourselves back to God.
I pray that whatever season you are in and whatever side of the world you are on at the moment, the Lord will sustain you. And as our idols are stripped away, idols of control and even idols surrounding our image of how God “should” work, I pray that the Lord will reveal more of Himself in the midst of these strange ashes.
References
1. Prasad, Amid. “Urban Slum Population.” World Health Organization, World Health Organization, https://www.who.int/data/gho/indicator-metadata-registry/imr-details/2476. Accessed 15 May 2025.
2. Rend Collective. “”Whatever Comes.”” YouTube, 2017, https://youtu.be/vP_EyBhjFXI?si=OsTpa1iHjzcjRWhk. Accessed 16 May 2025.
3. Elliott, Elisabeth. These Strange Ashes: A Deeply Personal Account of Elisabeth Elliot’s First Year as a Missionary. Kindle ed., Grand Rapids, MI, Revell, 1998. Pages 137-139.
Photo by Jonny Gios on Unsplash
