A RESURRECTION MESSAGE FROM PONDOK PALEM

He lives! I know He lives.  He lives within my heart.

A Home Called Pondok Palem

I was all alone in our temporary home in Batu, Malang in Indonesia. The owners of the house named it Pondok Palem in much the same way that we have a well-known residence in the US called Monticello and Scarlet O’Hara in Gone With the Wind had her Tara. It was 1976, the first year of our missionary term in the island of Java. We were temporarily residing in the home of our missionary friends Carl and Grace Fish. The Fish family was home on furlough in the US. This particular week Don was in Jakarta, the country’s capital city, which was a day’s journey by bus from Malang. He was trying to get our shipment of personal goods released. I did not know when he would be back as one never knew how much time the authorities would take to process the documents for the release of the shipment. I was alone in the house except for the young man who kept the grounds. In the evening, the young girl who helped us with house chores would come to keep me company.

John 11:25-26

In the early morning, as was my routine, I went to the study to have my time of Bible reading and prayer. As I read Chapter 11 of the Gospel of John, verses 25-26 stood out. Jesus said unto her, "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die. Believest thou this?” I read it and kept reading it over and over.

A Phone Call

The day before Don and I left for Indonesia, I had called my father to say goodbye. It was a difficult conversation. He was in his late 70’s and I had not seen him for awhile. He was in New York and we were in California.

“You take care. This may be the last time you’ll hear my voice,” he said with much emotion. 

We both knew that this was a possibility, but I tried to dismiss it. After all this was not the first time he had melodramatically talked to me this way. When I was nineteen and fresh out of college, I took a teaching position in a Christian school in Southern Cotabato, which was as far away from my home as New York is to California. He never liked the idea of my going so far away, but I was completely convinced that God wanted me to do this. I taught in that school for almost five years and every time I came home, my father would always say those words. However, somewhere in my mind I knew he might be right this time. My sisters had to finally move him to a nursing home to better take care of him. The years had taken their toll.

John 11:25-26 reminded me of that last conversation with my father. Soon tears were rolling down my cheeks. Then I began to sob uncontrollably. Up to that day, I had never experienced the loss of a loved one. I was going through extreme grief for a loss that had not happened. Through my tears, I kept reading the words, “I am the resurrection and the life . . .” Though familiar with these verses, I had never memorized them. I felt that I should commit them to memory. When my father died in December, 1978, I was saddened, but the tears did not even come. God’s wonderful grace had prepared me for this day. And as if this wasn't enough, the following month of January, 1979, our son Matthew (whose name means “gift from God”) was born. We temporarily lost a father, but were gifted with a son.

Resurrection Day means a lot of different things to a believer. But at this particular time, 37 years ago, in the quiet of the study at Pondok Palem in a little town in Central Java, Resurrection Day meant a promise that I would see my father again someday and so, I had no reason to grieve as one who had no hope.