Missionaries and Families

I'm on a roll and so I am entering yet another heart gripper. First, though, I want to remember my friend Bernice. She left us last night and I feel an empty space in my heart. She was a very dear friend.

Enjoy:
They were five teenagers with ordinary faces. They had the kind of haircuts that tuck well under baseball caps. Their young bodies contrasted sharply with the white shirts and sober suits they all wore. They dressed as men that day.

All around them clustered family, quietly talking, laughing, crying, waiting. The plane was almost ready to begin boarding. The plane's destination was the Soviet Union.

These five young men, some with their suit jackets slung across their arms, quietly gathered together. They spoke in low tones while the noise and bustle of the airline terminal swirled around them.

Each had a crying mother, a proud father, a family unit to say goodbye to. They would be gone for two years. They were some of the first to test glasnost and enter the Soviet Union with long-forbidden books of religion, and a message about God.

The plane was ready for boarding.

The five young men put down their precious books, their suitcases, their flowers and cards. They stood together in silence, and then as one voice, they began to sing.

Quiet and hardly noticed at first, their harmony rose clearer and deeper as all noise and movement in the airline terminal slowly ceased. They were singing for their families. They were singing for themselves. They were singing for all the lives they hoped to touch in Communist Russia.

"God be with us till we meet again," they sang. "Till we meet, at Jesus' feet. God be with us till we meet again."

As they sang, their families joined to form one family, linking hands and weeping. Strangers stopped in mid-stride as they entered the stilled terminal and heard singing. All around them travelers stood with bowed heads and glistening eyes.

"Till we meet, till we meet. God be with us till we meet again."

Then they were gone, in a last flurry of hugs and kisses. They left behind them a song and an experience that was extraordinary.

Peace had come briefly, fleetingly, to an airline terminal. Peace followed five young men onto a plane bound for Russia. Peace that had nothing to do with nuclear arsenals or Geneva conventions. Peace as simple and moving as a song.

God be with them.

and with you...