Close Call

Having loaded the seven-ton truck with supplies and church building materials in Ouagadougou, we began the four-hour trip back to our home in the bush of eastern Burkina Faso. Dodging donkeys, sheep, potholes big enough to get lost in, and keeping the dump truck on the pavement was a demanding task on any road, but bicycle and foot traffic had worn away the shoulder of the road. One slip of the truck wheels off the pavement to the shoulder 10 inches below, and the heavily laden truck could flip over.

My traveling companion was a 16-year-old villager who had just become a believer a few weeks before, and I was helping him understand that the trust he formerly had in his fetishes was based on fear, but the trust he now had in Christ is based on love.

As we talked, dark clouds formed to the north of us, and a huge dust storm was racing towards us. We sped ahead to reach a safe place, but the sand started pelting the truck. The storm engulfed us quickly, and when we came abruptly to a halt in the middle of the road, it was so dark we could not see the ground.

The darkness prevailed for several minutes, and then the sandstorm moved on. The dust cleared, and we sat staring out the windshield in amazement. Less than 20 feet from the front bumper of the dump truck was a bush taxi loaded with more than two dozen people.

Realizing how dangerously close we had come to a fatal accident, we stumbled out of the truck as the passengers climbed out of the bush taxi. All of us simultaneously fell to our knees. Some were praying to their idols and some in the name of Mohamed. But my young friend and I were praying with thanksgiving in the name of Jesus. My friend said to me, Those people are praying out of fear, but we are praying out of love.” He said, “My love and trust are in Jesus. He cares for me, so I pray out of love.”

The young believer had learned a valuable truth that most of us take for granted. “The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him. But, with an overflowing flood he will make a complete end of the adversaries and will pursue his enemies into darkness.” Nahum 1:7.