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RENDEZVOUS

Look Back, Look Up, Look Forward

Director's Perspective by Jim Carlson

It wasn’t until fairly recently that Riscilla Grimshaw forwarded this picture to me, which of course brought on a flood of memories. The year was 1979, and I was a Rocky Mountain Bible Mission summer worker, that particular week at the Hot Springs Bible Church and Lone Pine area, and Matt and Riscilla were my host family. Jerry and Shirley Windle served the pastorate, and all four of their children were home that summer. The pickup was a 1957-59 conglomerate of a Ford half-ton for which I’d paid $350. The topper cost another $50, purchased from my friend Ian Ireland after our first year at Montana Institute of the Bible. Mary and I were married later that summer.

Details of the summer work and people are clear and ready to hand. It was a memorable time and, of course, it seems like it all happened only last week.

Hindsight. A trip down memory lane. Reminiscing on the "good old days." This is a positive thing, not only for the sake of bittersweet nostalgia, but because such remembering provides an excellent opportunity to rejoice in what the Lord has done!

It was forty years that the Israelites were sentenced to wander in the Sinai wilderness before they entered the Promised Land. Forty years of chastisement, forty years of miraculous provision, forty years of divine object lessons, forty years of Moses’ face-to-face-with-God leadership, forty years in sandals that did not wear out! Forty years of heritage-building education that was well worth keeping in mind.

God miraculously held back the waters of the Jordan so His people could cross into the Land on dry ground. Once all the children of Israel had ambled over, He instructed Joshua to have a representative of each of the twelve tribes place a large rock on the dry riverbed. The twelve piled stones would be visible above the river’s normal waterline as a memory device from God Himself, so that "...when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, ‘what are these stones?’ then you shall inform your children, saying, ‘Israel crossed this Jordan on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you had crossed, just as the Lord your God had done to the Red Sea, which He dried up before us until we had crossed; that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, so that you may fear the Lord your God forever" (Joshua 4.21-24).

A look back for a look forward. See what God has done in order to give Him praise, and in anticipation of what He will yet do! This special edition of the Rendezvous is much more than a look back over the years of the Rocky Mountain Bible Mission, it is a testimony to a great God, Who is "our help in ages past, our hope for years to come!"