Bitter Defeat at Awaji Island
[Adventures in Faith: Japan; the late 1980s] Tom and I went on another three-day faith journey. We brought no money and no bag. Things went quite badly.
Our previous mission to Awaji Island was intoxicating. Our feeble attempt was met with resounding success.
Some months later, we felt it was time to go again. We made plans to return to Awaji Island on another three-day faith trip.
We agreed upon the same constraints as before. We would bring no money, no bag, no extra clothes, and no map. It was a Zero Bag trip.
The only thing in our pockets would some Christian pamphlets.
As before, the ferry started out from Akashi. It took us across the Seto Inland Sea, and landed at the terminal in Iwaya on Awaji Island.
This time, when we left the ferry terminal, we turned right instead of left. We went in the opposite direction from our last trip.
As before, Tom stuck out his thumb to hitchhike. But nobody picked us up.
We walked and walked and walked, and it still felt like we’d made no progress.
Finally, we found a tiny village. We decided to hand out pamphlets. Our coat pockets were stuffed full of them, just like they were last time.
But there was hardly anybody around. Those few people who walked by us weren’t interested.
Nobody offered us lodging. Or food. Or drink. Or kindness.
Without any food, my gastro-intestinal tract turned sour. I became pretty ill. Soon, I was in a lot of pain.
Tom spotted an orchard. By Japan standards, it was huge. It may have been an acre or more. It was filled with fruit trees. Most of them were orange trees.
With no other food presenting itself, and with my desperate need to eat something, the orchard was looking to be our only chance.
But I was reluctant. It seemed like stealing. Plus I had already learned that my body often had a bad reaction to fruit, especially oranges.
Then two ideas occurred to me.
- Regarding stealing, in the Old Testament, poor people were allowed to glean produce from a farmer’s field. The LORD God didn’t forbid it.
- Regarding my body’s possible bad reaction to fruit, it might not be as bad as what would happen if I didn’t eat soon.
So we walked to the orchard and got oranges.
We ate of the fruit.
Fortunately, this wasn’t the Garden of Eden. And the fruit wasn’t forbidden. Not by the LORD God, anyway.
But the fruit was forbidden by my body.
Right away, I got ill. Real ill. My guts cramped so painfully that tears pooled up in my eyes. And I started having explosive digestive troubles. Often.
I wasn’t able to go anywhere.
It was evening. Nobody had invited us to stay with them. We had no money, so we couldn’t get a motel room.
We had no place to stay.
After a search, we found a public building, located near the shore, that was left unlocked all night. That was going to be our makeshift motel.
When its customers emptied out, late that evening, we went in. We made ourselves as comfortable as we could, and prepared for the night.
The seats were made of fiberglass. They were designed to be form fitting. As we sat in them, the curved shape of the seats slid us down into a slump.
We couldn’t lay across the seats, because each seat was an individual bucket seat, complete with individual armrests.
If you were in a competition to design seats that prevent people from falling asleep, these were the seats that would win the Olympic Gold Medal.
There were groups of four seats that were bolted into fixed positions on a common steel base. So we couldn’t even adjust their position.
After ten minutes, they felt rigid and uncomfortable.
Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the place was heated. It was heated with a kerosene heater.
But the heater wasn’t burning cleanly. The place smelled like someone had dumped a gallon of kerosene on the concrete floor, closed the doors, and walked away.
The walls and windows and chairs were coated with a sticky residue from the kerosene fumes.
It was a long and miserable night. I didn’t sleep a wink.
The next morning, we made sure to exit the building before anyone showed up. We didn’t want anyone to figure out that we had spent the night there.
We probably did nothing wrong. We probably didn’t break any laws. But it is a lot simpler to avoid trouble than to get out of trouble.
Now what? What should we do?
I found that I could walk.
I was ambulatory, but only because I was so exhausted that I couldn’t feel the pain as much.
My guts were emptied. There was nothing left, except for shaky weakness and pain.
We set off without a clear goal. We deemed that to be OK. We were on a faith trip, and we needed the LORD God to set our agenda for us.
But no goal became apparent. The only thing that presented itself to us was a road that went up a hill.
We climbed the hill. In my weakened state, it took a long time.
At the top, there was a beautiful housing development.
The houses were almost brand new. They had actual yards, yards with actual green grass. It was unlike anything we’d ever seen in Osaka or Kobe.
In relative terms, these people were wealthy.
This was our opportunity. We could evangelize here. Thanks to our evangelistic failures yesterday, our coat pockets were still stuffed with pamphlets.
Like we’d done many times before, we could go door-to-door, handing out pamphlets.
So that’s what we did.
However, we quickly learned most people were not home. Or at least most people did not answer the door.
The few that did answer the door were stay-at-home moms.
Upon seeing us scruffy-looking foreigners, they looked terrified.
But with characteristic Japanese politeness, they listened to our spiel. As heroes of hospitality, they extended every courtesy to us strangers.
As we visited with people, I was completely exhausted. I had nothing left to give. I counted my blessings just to stand upright.
Whenever I could, I leaned against things for support. So Tom did most of the talking. He was miles ahead of me anyway, in his acquisition of the Japanese language.
He was also much less inhibited than me, and his natural smile was winsome.
But despite everything, people were afraid of us.
And maybe with good cause. We had a sleepless night. We reeked of kerosine. We probably looked like we were homeless. And I was obviously quite ill and scarcely ambulatory.
Our first trip to Awaji Island enjoyed the choicest blessings of God. But this trip did not.
We decided to end the trip.
We slowly made our way back to the ferry terminal. We had to walk the whole distance.
Along the way, we noticed a giant statue of a Buddhist saint. Including the base, it was about 100 meters tall.
Tom and I joked that maybe this Buddhist statue didn’t want us Christian missionaries invading his turf.
Of course, that was just us being silly. It was gallows humor.
The statue was of Kannon-sama. That is the Japanese name for Avalokiteśvara. She is the Buddhist picture of compassion.
I’m not sure how we made it back across the Seto Inland Sea to Ferry City in Akashi. I was so ill and in so much pain that I have no recollection of our return trip.
Knowing Tom’s courage, he may have simply asked someone at the ferry terminal to pay for our tickets.
We never figured out what went wrong with this second faith trip to Awaji Island. But we had some theories:
Theory 1
Maybe God didn’t actually send us on the second trip. Hence, it did not enjoy his blessings.
We couldn’t embrace this theory, though, because we felt God did indeed send us on the second trip.
Plus, if it were that easy to be completely wrong about God’s leading, then God’s leading is too inscrutable to bother trying to follow.
Theory 2
Maybe the failure was a test of our resolve. We are to live by faith, not by sight:
2 Corinthians 5:7. for we walk by faith, not by sight.
We’re to do the right thing out of love for the LORD God, whether or not it produces the desired results.
If so, even if the whole trip seemed to be a failure, perhaps we should view it as a resounding victory for Action-Faith.
Theory 3
Maybe the failure indicates we were in some rebellion against God?
Had we derailed God’s blessings by disobedience?
We weren’t aware of any disobedience.
Theory 4
Maybe the failure was a lesson to show us that ministry sometimes consists of failing.
Whatever the reason, we emerged from the experiment undeterred.
Our faith was stronger than ever.
Maybe that strengthened faith was the real purpose of our bitter defeat at Awaji Island.
In the days to come, we would moved on to things that, unknown to us, would be much, much more challenging.
RESOURCES
My faith journeys:
Sweet Victory at a Remote Village in India
At Wikipedia:
ADVENTURES IN FAITH
NOTE. Names, dates, and locations may have been changed.
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