The Tunnel Experience

This is the first time in my life I have ever stood on a platform to speak with a hairdo like this. I do not represent some other faction--there are no factions in God's Kingdom. Wherever we find the people of God, they are the same. My head cover has come as a result of my illness. It is a poor substitute for what God has given us to cover our head.  When I see all your hairdos, my heart says, "Don't abuse your hair." I lost mine in three days and that could happen to anyone. A turban is a poor substitute for what God has given us for our glory. 

I have been recuperating in Washington with my brother and sister-in-law and I have been going on some walks. I have enjoyed some meditations and reflecting back on them. A tunnel isn't always a pleasant experience, but it helps us on our journey. I look at the mountains and the difficult terrain that we would have to tread if someone had not cut a tunnel. As dark and difficult as they may be, tunnels are a help toward the end of the journey. It was getting near Gilroy time and my mind went back a year to the tunnel of grief, sorrow and loss when our two young brothers were taken and then the tunnel of concern for our other young brother, lying in the hospital. The influence of that tunnel went around the world and our feelings were shared in every part. A unity came out of it that had never been and it has bound us together and helped us. 

I have begun to realize there are a lot of tunnels in the scriptures I wasn't aware of before. Joseph started in a tunnel at the age of seventeen when his father thought he was dead and his brothers didn't care. He went through some very difficult experiences but had something in his heart that sustained him through that tunnel. "The Lord was with him." The presence of God came to him from that tunnel experience - a deep under­standing and consciousness of the presence of God. 

Job had a tunnel experience - everything he had naturally was taken from him and he was devastated and felt "Why go on?" but he was in the tunnel. He said, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust Him." That experience made trust so real to him. Grateful is the man or woman who passes through a tunnel on their journey and finds it solidifies their trust in the God of heaven. 

Psalm 71:4-5. The Psalmist was going through an experience every child of God goes through, maybe even more than once. He said, "Thou art my hope." That experience deepened his hope in the God who was able to keep and deliver him and bring him to the end of the tunnel. 

The day these thoughts were so real to me was the day after the doctor gave me the report of my tests. I should have been walking in deep sorrow and despair but I have to admit there was an unspeakable joy in my heart as I was walking. That joy was in my heart when I called Eldon about my report and plans were made for me to come to Gilroy. 1 was looking forward to seeing all the workers on the staff and meeting workers who before I had only heard of, and seeing so many of the lambs and sheep of the fold. I was in a tunnel but I was walking with joy. How grateful we can be when the tunnel experience deepens our fellowship. All of us will be going through tunnel experiences and may it be we can profit by them, that we can know more of a unity because of it, more fellowship with God, a deeper trust, a hope that goes beyond this world, that we can have this comfort that comes from fellowship with God and His people. 

I am in a tunnel these days and the doctor has given me reason to believe that the faint glimmer of light I see at the end of the tunnel is the shore of eternity. I do not know when that light will come into full focus, but I know the darkness of the tunnel will be past and the best is yet ahead.

C. BROWN – 1988 - Gilroy, CA