Same Person, Different Results
My parent’s first missionary term was in a remarkably inaccessible place. The rough dirt road passed through three rivers, and the largest one still needs a four-wheel drive to cross—amid rocks and boulders no one has bothered to clear in seventy years. And we were told to not even think about crossing it after a rain. No wonder many people moved away from this remote place after a tarmac road was built a day’s walk away. They had a church out there with two humongous missionary houses. Hard to conceive. My mother was only twenty-five and my father, thirty-one. There he…
A Pilgrimage to My Past and to Life
In 1963 my father died an untimely death and was buried in an obscure graveyard in an obscure rural area of what most Westerners consider an obscure country, Tanzania. To go that area, called Ihanja, you must go to what seems the middle of nowhere, then keep going. Yet to the many people who live there, it is home, the center of their world. And my father is legendary. Finally, after sixty-two years, I made a pilgrimage back to visit his grave. I also got to sleep in my childhood bedroom of the home where we lived; I preached in…
He Sees You
I visited Yale University, perhaps the most beautiful college campus in America. Most of the architecture is a reproduced Oxford University, and I went back in time to when I did a summer program at Oxford, and one of my short-lived dreams was to get a masters and doctorate at Cambridge, then teach at a prestigious university like this one. It was short-lived because I had an even-more presumptuous dream of becoming a writer whom these professors taught about. Yeah, right, Lundell. God got me and spared me from my ding-a-ling ego. Eventually, I felt God’s calling to fully commit myself…
The Strange Thing about Harvard
I visited the campus of a place called Harvard University. Surrounded by harmoniously designed red brick buildings, Harvard Yard naturally stimulates one’s aspirations. The original Harvard gate still prominently bears its centerpiece: a cross. Harvard’s original core purpose for being was to “educate the clergy.” It was primarily a seminary to train pastors in Bible and theology in the Christian worship of God. In truth, they had the heady, intellectual approach of the Enlightenment rather than practical training. That’s a big reason why things went the way they did. Now as I walked the campus, I was surprised that a…
A Visit to Where I Didn’t Go
Have you ever checked out something you chose not to do in life? Doing so can be meaningful. When I was eighteen, I seriously considered applying to the United States Coast Guard Academy to pursue a career as an officer. Almost a lifetime later when I was on a trip nearby the place, I had to visit and check it out. I wanted closure as to why I never went there. wasn’t supposed to be allowed on campus, but after hearing my story, the guard kindly got permission to let me in. Between what I saw and learned in the museum, by observing the…
