Dale Decker, a missionary colleague of mine in Kolkata (Calcutta), was diagnosed with Mad Cow Disease and died a horrible death. Think of the Medieval concept of the harrowing of Hell and you have a fairly good picture of the hallucinatory agony he suffered. I will not attempt to detail, except only to say that since the disease is highly transmittable through saliva, even his wife, Beth, was not allowed to be near him. He died virtually alone and uncomforted. Prior to his appointment as a missionary, Dale had suffered with crippling rheumatoid arthritis and grimaced with pain with every step he took. When asked by the committee that interviewed him for his mission’s appointed, ‘How he proposed to deal with this in Bangladesh (his country of choice) that had at best limited medical services?’ His response was, “Well, I can suffer there as I do here. Suffering is not the issue, my calling is.” He was appointed and made a wonderful missionary, and role model not only for the nationals but also us as missionaries.
The point of the introductory paragraph was to introduce you to a collection of proverbial comments that he made throughout his life which his wife, Beth, collected and shared with us at a Thanksgiving missionary retreat in Sri Lanka in September of 2017. Below is an edited version of what she said:
1. Jesus wants the real you, not just a role you chose to play. 2. Sometimes you must die to launch a project for God. 3. Jesus can keep you in any nation on earth. 4. If you take care of the depts of your life, God will take care of the breadth of your life. 5. Invest now in what you want to look like 20 years from now. 6. Joshua learned to lead by trusting in God. 7. Clay pots get broken, yet every piece is useful. To be Christian is to risk brokenness. That, too, is useful (2 Cor. 4:7-12). 8. Jesus always calls us to Himself. 9. The paradigm of our life is the Cross. 10. The trajectory of my life is to be like Jesus (Rom. 8:28-29). 11. The Gospel doesn’t need a pulpit, it needs a welcoming table. 12. Peter first saw who Jesus was, then he saw who he was. 13. Jesus did not call us to destroy us. 14. The agony of becoming is the path we must take to follow Jesus.What a legacy. What a life. It was my pleasure to know him, not just as a brother in Christ but a friend who walked with me in this journey we call life.
Jim Roane
The Retreat
Nov. 1, 2024
