God's Smuggler

by Brother Andrew

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, it’s also possible to pay in installments, thirty pounds at the start of each session. But for your sake and for ours we like to insist that the installments be paid on time.”

  “Yes, sir. I altogether agree.”

  I did agree too. This was going to be my first experiment in trusting God for the material needs of life. I had the thirty pounds I had brought from Holland for the first semester’s fee. After that I really looked forward to seeing how God was going to supply the money.

  During the first few weeks, however, something kept happening that bothered me. At mealtimes the students would frequently discuss inadequate funds. Sometimes after a whole night in prayer for a certain need, half of the request would be granted, or three-quarters. If an old people’s home, for example, where students conducted services, needed ten blankets, the students would perhaps receive enough to buy them six. The Bible said that we were workers in God’s vineyard. Was this the way the Lord of the vineyard paid His hired men?

  One night I went out for a long, solitary walk. On several occasions students had warned me not to “go into Patrick.” Patrick was the slum sitting at the bottom of our hill. It was, they said, the home of addicts, drunks, thieves, even murderers, and walking its streets was unsafe. And yet this area drew me now as if it had something to say.

  All around me were the dirty gray streets of Patrick. Litter blew across the cobblestones. The September air was already raw. Before I had gone five blocks I was accosted two times by beggars. I gave them all the money I had in my pockets and watched as they moved without pretense toward the nearest pub. I knew that these drifters, begging in the streets of the Glasgow slums, would receive a better income than the missionaries-in-training at the top of the hill.

  I could not understand why this bothered me so. Was I greedy? I didn’t think so. We had always been poor, and I had never worried about it. What was it then?

  And suddenly, walking back up the hill toward the school, I had my answer.

  The question was not one of money at all. What I was worried about was a relationship.

  At the chocolate factory I trusted Mr. Ringers to pay me in full and on time. Surely I said to myself, if an ordinary factory worker could be financially secure, so could one of God’s workers.

  I turned through the gate at the school. Above me was the reminder “Have Faith In God.”

  That was it! It wasn’t that I needed the security of a certain amount of money, it was that I needed the security of a relationship.

  I walked up the crunchy pebblewalk feeling more and more certain that I was on the verge of something exciting. The school was asleep and quiet. I tiptoed upstairs and sat by the bedroom window looking out over Glasgow. If I were going to give my life as a servant of the King, I had to know that King. What was He like? In what way could I trust Him? In the same way I trusted a set of impersonal laws? Or could I trust Him as a living leader, as a very present commander in battle? The question was central. Because if He were a King in name only, I would rather go back to the chocolate factory. I would remain a Christian, but I would know that my religion was only a set of principles, excellent and to be followed, but hardly demanding devotion.

  Suppose on the other hand that I were to discover God to be a Person, in the sense that He communicated and cared and loved and led. That was something quite different. That was the kind of King I would follow into any battle.

  And somehow, sitting there in the moonlight that September night in Glasgow, I knew that my probing into God’s nature was going to begin with this issue of money. That night I knelt in front of the window and made a covenant with Him. “Lord,” I said, “I need to know if I can trust You in practical things. I thank You for letting me earn the fees for the first semester. I ask You now to supply the rest of them. If I have to be so much as a day late in paying, I shall know that I am supposed to go back to the chocolate factory.”

  It was a childish prayer, petulant and demanding. But then I was still a child in the Christian life. The remarkable thing is that God honored my prayer. But not without first testing me in some rather amusing ways.

  ———

  The first semester sped by. Mornings we spent in the classrooms studying systematic theology, homiletics, world religions, linguistics—the type of courses taught in any seminary. In the afternoon we worked at practical skills: bricklaying, plumbing, carpentry, first aid, tropical hygiene, motor repair. For several weeks all of us, girls as well as boys, worked at the Ford factory in London, learning how to take a car apart and put it together. In addition to these standard trades, we were taught to build huts out of palm fronds and how to make mud jars that would hold water.

  And meanwhile we took turns in the kitchen and the laundry and the garden. No one was exempt. One of the students was a doctor, a German woman, and I used to watch her scouring garbage pails as though she were preparing a room for surgery.

  The weeks passed so fast that soon it came time for me to head out on the first of several training trips in evangelism. “You’re going to like this, Andy,” said Mr. Dinnen. “It’s an exercise in trust. The rules are simple. Each student on your team is given a one-pound banknote. With that you go on a missionary tour through Scotland. You’re expected to pay your own transportation, your own lodging, your food, any advertising you want to do, the renting of halls, providing refreshments—”

  “All on a one-pound note?”

  “Worse than that. When you get back to school after four weeks, you’re expected to pay back the pound!”

  I laughed. “Sounds like we’ll be passing the hat all the time.”

  “Oh, you’re not allowed to take up collections! Never. You’re not to mention money at your meetings. All of your needs have got to be provided without any manipulation on your part—or the experiment is a failure.”

  I was a member of a team of five boys. Later when I tried to reconstruct where our funds came from during those four weeks, it was hard to. It seemed that what we needed was always just there. Sometimes a letter would arrive from one of the boys’ parents with a little money. Sometimes we would get a check in the mail from a church we had visited days or weeks earlier. The notes that came with these gifts were always interesting. “I know you don’t need money or you would have mentioned it,” someone would write. “But God just wouldn’t let me get to sleep tonight until I had put this in an envelope for you.”

  Contributions frequently came in the form of produce. In one little town in the highlands of Scotland we were given six hundred eggs. We had eggs for breakfast, eggs for lunch, eggs as hors d’oeuvres before a dinner of eggs with an egg-white meringue dessert. It was weeks before we could look a chicken in the eye.

  But money or produce, we stuck fast to two rules: We never mentioned a need aloud, and we gave away a tithe of whatever came to us as soon as we got it—within 24 hours if possible.

  Another team that set out from school at the same time we did, was not so strict about tithing. They set aside their ten percent all right, but they didn’t give it away immediately, “in case we run into an emergency.” Of course they had emergencies! So did we, every day. But they ended their month owing money to hotels, lecture halls, and markets all over Scotland, while we came back to school almost ten pounds ahead. Fast as we could give money away, God was always swifter, and we ended with money to send to the WEC work overseas.

  There were times before the end of the tour, however, when it looked as though the experiment was failing. One weekend we were holding meetings in Edinburgh. We had attracted a large group of young people the first day and were casting about for a way to get them to come back the next. Suddenly, without consulting anyone, one of the team members stood up and made an announcement.

  “Before the meeting tomorrow evening,” he said, “we’d like you all to have tea with us here. Four o’clock. How many think they can make it?”

  A couple dozen hands went up, and we were committed. At
first, instead of being delighted, the rest of us were horrified. All of us knew that we had no tea, no cake, no bread and butter, and exactly five cups. Nor did we have money to buy these things; our last penny had gone to rent the hall. This was going to be a real test of God’s care.

  And for a while it looked as though He was going to provide everything through the young people themselves. After the meeting several of them came forward and said they would like to help. One offered milk; another, half a pound of tea; another, sugar. One girl even offered to bring dishes. Our tea was rapidly taking shape. But there was one thing still missing—the cake. Without cake, these Scottish boys and girls wouldn’t consider tea tea.

  So that night in our evening prayer time, we put the matter before God. “Lord, we’ve got ourselves into a spot. From somewhere we’ve got to get a cake. Will You help us?”

  That night as we rolled up in our blankets on the floor of the hall, we played guessing games: How was God going to give us that cake? Among the five of us, we guessed everything imaginable—or so we thought.

  Morning arrived. We half expected a heavenly messenger to come to our door bearing a cake. But no one came. The morning mail arrived. We ripped open the two letters, hoping for money. There was none. A woman from a nearby church came by to see if she could help. “Cake” was on the tip of all our tongues, but we swallowed the word and shook our heads.

  “Everything,” we assured her, “is in God’s hands.”

  The tea had been announced for four o’clock in the afternoon. At three the tables were set, but still we had no cake. Three-thirty came. We put on water to boil. Three-forty-five.

  And then the doorbell rang.

  All of us together ran to the big front entrance, and there was the postman. In his hand was a large box.

  “Hello, lads,” said the postman. “Got something for you that feels like a food package.” He handed the box to one of the boys. “The delivery day is over, actually,” he said, “but I hate to leave a perishable package overnight.”

  We thanked him profusely, and the minute he closed the door the boy solemnly handed me the box. “It’s for you, Andrew. From a Mrs. William Hopkins in London.”

  I took the package and carefully unwrapped it. Off came the twine. Off came the brown outside paper. Inside, there was no note—only a large white box. Deep in my soul I knew that I could afford the drama of lifting the lid slowly. As I did, there, in perfect condition, to be admired by five sets of wondering eyes, was an enormous, glistening, moist, chocolate cake.

  ———

  With this kind of experience behind me, I was not really surprised to find waiting for me when we got back to school, a check from the Whetstras that was exactly enough, when converted into pounds, to pay my second term’s fee.

  The second term seemed to go even faster than the first, so much was there to grasp and to ponder. But before that term was over, I had received money to keep me there a third, this time from—of all places—some buddies at the veterans’ hospital. And so it went throughout the second year too.

  I never mentioned the school fees to anyone, and yet the gifts always came at such a moment that I could pay them in full and on time. Nor did they ever contain more than the school costs, and—in spite of the fact that the people who were helping me did not know one another—they never came two together.

  God’s faithfulness I was experiencing continually, and I was also finding out something about His sense of humor.

  I had made a covenant with God never to run out of money for school fees. My covenant said nothing about running out of soap. Or toothpaste. Or razor blades.

  One morning I discovered I was out of laundry soap. But when I reached into the drawer where I kept my money, all I could find was sixpence. Laundry soap cost eightpence.

  “You know that I have to keep clean, God. So will You work it out about the two pennies?” I took my sixpence and made my way to the street where the shops were, and sure enough, right away I saw a sign. “Twopence off! Buy your SURF now.” I walked in, made my savings, and strolled back up the hill whistling. There was plenty of soap in that box to last, with care, until the end of school.

  But that very night a friend saw me washing out a shirt and shouted, “Say, Andrew, lend me some soap, will you? I’m out.”

  Of course I let him have the soap and said nothing. I just watched him pour out my precious Surf, knowing somehow that he wasn’t going to pay it back. Every day he borrowed a bit more of that soap, and every day I had to use just a little bit less.

  And then it was toothpaste. The tube was really finished. Squeezed, twisted, torn apart, and scraped—finished. I had read somewhere that common table salt makes a good dentifrice. And no doubt my teeth got clean, but my mouth wore a permanent pucker.

  And razor blades. I had not thrown away my used blades, and sure enough the day came when I had to resurrect them. I had no hone, so I stropped them on my bare arm. Ten minutes a day on my own skin: I remained clean shaven—but it was at a price.

  Throughout this time I sensed that God was playing a game with me. Perhaps He was using these experiences to teach me the difference between a Want and a Need. Toothpaste tasted good, new razor blades shaved quicker—but these were luxuries, not necessities. I was certain that should a real need arise, God would supply it.

  And a true need did arise.

  It was necessary for foreigners in Britain to renew their visas at periodic intervals. I had to have mine renewed by December 31, 1954, or leave the country. But when that month rolled around, I did not have a cent to my name. How was I going to get the forms down to London? A registered letter cost one shilling—twelve pennies. I did not believe that God was going to let me be thrown out of school for the lack of a shilling.

  And so the game moved into a new phase. I had a name for it by now. I called it the Game of the Royal Way. I had discovered that when God supplied money He did it in a kingly manner, not in some groveling way.

  Three separate times, over the matter of that registered letter, I was almost lured from the Royal Way. I was, that last year, head of the student body and in charge of the school’s tract fund. One day my eye lit first on the calendar—it was December 28—and then on the fund. It happened to contain several pounds just then. Surely it would be all right to borrow just one shilling.

  And surely not, too. Quickly I put the idea behind me.

  And then it was December 29. Two days left. I had almost forgotten how bitter salt tasted and how long it took to strop a razor blade on my arm, so intrigued was I over the drama of the shilling. That morning the thought occurred to me that perhaps I might find those pennies lying on the ground.

  I had actually put on my coat and started down the street before I saw what I was doing. I was walking along with head bowed, eyes on the ground, searching the gutter for pennies. What kind of Royal Way was this! I straightened up and laughed out loud there on the busy street. I walked back to school with my head high but no closer to getting the money.

  The last round in the game was the most subtle of all. It was December 30. I had to have my application in the mail that day if it was to get to London on the 31st.

  At ten o’clock in the morning, one of the students shouted up the stairwell that I had a visitor. I ran down the stairs thinking that this must be my delivering angel. But when I saw who it was, my heart dropped. This visitor wasn’t coming to bring me money, he was coming to ask for it. For it was Richard, a friend I had made months ago in the Patrick slums, a young man who came to the school occasionally when he just had to have cash.

  With dragging feet I went outside. Richard stood on the white-pebble walkway, hands in pockets, eyes lowered. “Andrew,” he said, “would you be having a little extra cash? I’m hungry.”

  I laughed and told him why. I told him about the soap and the razor blades, and as I spoke I saw the coin.

  It lay among the pebbles, the sun glinting off it in just such a way that I could see it but not Richard.
I could tell from its color that it was a shilling. Instinctively I stuck out my foot and covered the coin with my toe. Then as Richard and I talked, I reached down and picked up the coin along with a handful of pebbles. I tossed the pebbles down one by one, aimlessly, until at last I had just the shilling in my hand. But even as I dropped the coin into my pocket, the battle began. That coin meant I could stay in school. I wouldn’t be doing Richard a favor by giving it to him—he’d spend it on drink and be thirsty as ever in an hour.

  While I was still thinking up excellent arguments, I knew it was no good. How could I judge Richard when Christ told me so clearly that I must not. Furthermore, this was not the Royal Way! What right had an ambassador to hold on to money when another of the King’s children stood in front of him saying he was hungry. I shoved my hand back into my pocket and drew out the silver coin.

  “Look, Richard,” I said, “I do have this. Would it help any?”

  Richard’s eyes lit up. “It would, mate.” He tossed the coin into the air and ran off down the hill. With a light heart that told me I had done the right thing, I turned to go back inside.

  And before I reached the door the postman turned down our walk.

  In the mail of course was a letter for me. I knew when I saw Greetje’s handwriting that it would be from the prayer group at Ringers’ and that there would be cash inside. And there was. A lot of money: a pound and a half—thirty shillings. Far more than enough to send my letter, buy a large box of soap, treat myself to my favorite toothpaste—and buy Gillette Supers instead of Blues.

  The game was over. The King had done it His way.

  ———

  It was spring, 1955. My two years at the Missionary Training College were almost over, and I was eager to start work. Kees had graduated the year before and was in Korea. His letters were full of the needs and opportunities there, and the director asked me if I would consider joining him.