A Ten-Millimeter Bolt in the Road
January 29, 2010 – 7:30 amThe road up the mountain was the worst I’d ever seen, but then I’d never been on such an adventure before. This trip to India and the foothills of the Himalayas was my first experience overseas. A year before, I had begun helping Bibles International as a volunteer, preparing translation helps for the Old Testament.
Now I was on a short-term mission trip, experiencing firsthand a dramatically different culture and dramatically different work from my usual occupation of repairing musical instruments. My unique preparation in Greek and Hebrew years before had given me this remarkable assignment.
I came to India to attend a workshop to help native translators correct and complete their translations of the Bible. Several times our bus had crawled past other buses and trucks on narrow curves and in crowded villages.
But reaching our destination and accomplishing our goals had more than made up for the difficultly in getting there. My three-and-a-half-week session in the foothills of the Himalayas proved life-changing; I told the Lord while there that I would commit my life to Bible translation.
After much work, many unforgettable experiences, and many sad goodbyes to newfound brothers and sisters in Christ, we left the northern India mountains for the first step in our long journey home. The first leg was the most dangerous.
Though the roads were paved, the rugged mountains were not particularly tamed. On many curves I could not see the road beside the bus, only the steep drop-off. The bus driver was careful, but we had to maneuver around road repair crews and other buses and trucks coming up the other way.
Then when we had reached the village of Haldwani at the foot of the mountains, it happened. I heard a loud bang and felt the bus shudder toward the edge of the road. We’d blown a tire.
There were wide shoulders in this village and we got off the road relatively easily. We found ourselves stopped within a hundred feet of a tire shop! There the large rear dual wheel was pulled off and repaired.
I got out of the bus to see what had caused the flat. Protruding into the tire and still lodged securely in its tread was a ten-millimeter bolt, about five inches long. The bolt had entered head first even though the hex head of the bolt was about an inch across!
I realized that the bolt was an example of God’s providence and protection. He does not keep the “bolts” of life from sticking into our tires. If he did, people would become Christians just to get the “accident insurance.”
But God works all things together for the good of his children. Our tire hit the bolt — not on the treacherous mountain curves — but on the plains, in the town, just up the road from the tire shop. It doesn’t always work out that smoothly, but God’s care is always evident. We can trust him with our lives.
I have reflected often about friends and acquaintances, pastors, missionaries, church leaders, and other dedicated saints who have gone through the fire in the course of God’s service.
Sometimes what they and I have encountered was definitely much more than a bolt in the road - such as the day we laid my younger sister, a missionary in France, into the loving arms of her Savior.
Sometimes we think God should pick up all the bolts that lie in our way, but God’s plan is to put us on the road — with the bolts. The fact that there are bolts in the road makes it no less the road of God’s purpose.
And even if the bolt should prove the end of the road, God’s purpose for the saint will be fulfilled. Peter said that the testing of our faith is much more precious than gold, and that it is the testing that shows the genuineness of our faith, and the genuineness of God’s faithfulness.
The start of my journey to be a full-time Bible translator was not without a “bolt in the road,” and yet I knew God would lead me every step of the way and accomplish His purpose.
Glenn J. Kerr is chief translation consultant for Bibles International, the Bible Society of Baptist Mid-Missions. He has worked as a consultant for 15 years, being involved with translation projects on five continents and about 28 languages.
He has a master’s degree in Hebrew and Semitic Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has done graduate studies in linguistics at Michigan State University, and is currently in doctoral studies through the University of South Africa.
He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Bible translation and related linguistic subjects on an adjunct basis at three Bible colleges and universities in the US as well as his consulting work overseas.
