16

The Power of a Gentle Word

Many tense situations are made worse when we launch an inflammatory comment or lash out at an opponent in a way that riles the ego and fires the emotions. Before long, a shouting match is underway. Far better to hold our tongue and say nothing.

But we can do something even better: We can speak a word of peace and kindness in the face-off. This achieves more than just a cool détente; it opens the road to healing and warmth.

I had the immeasurable blessing of being married for nineteen years to a man whose words were consistently gentle, temperate, and uplifting. Whether speaking to me, to the children, to our American supporters, or to Filipino villagers, Martin was the essence of verbal grace.

In the mountains of Mindanao is a smattering of tribal villages where our Australian missionary colleagues Paul and Deb had settled and built an airstrip. Martin flew there often to take them supplies, carry out people who needed a doctor, and just encourage Paul and Deb in their work.

Not far away was another village where a man named Pik-Pik lived. He was a gambler, a heavy drinker, and a frequent fighter. His reputation for having a hot temper was well known in the village.

Some of his relatives and friends began walking over to the first village each week to attend the Bible studies that the missionaries were leading. This irritated Pik-Pik, and he said so bluntly. “You’re just wasting your time,” he told them.

He also noticed that whenever he heard the sound of Martin’s Cessna 180 coming in for a landing, people dropped everything and went running to the airstrip. “Why do you act so excited when the plane comes?” he carped. “It’s not as if it’s coming for you. You don’t even get to talk to the pilot—why would he ever want to talk to you?”

“No, no, you’re wrong,” his relatives said. “The pilot’s name is Martin, and he is our brother. He has even flown some of our people to the hospital in Cagayan.”

Pik-Pik was not impressed. But one day when he heard the engine drone, he elected to walk over to the hillside airstrip and see for himself what the fuss was about. He stood not at the top like everyone else but at the lower end, smack in the center of the approach.

People began yelling and waving for him to get out of the way as Martin made his final descent. He wouldn’t budge.

Martin set the plane down without hitting Pik-Pik, fortunately. He taxied up to the crowd, got out of the cockpit, took off his sunglasses, and greeted everyone warmly. Then he took a walk down to the end of the strip for a friendly conversation with Pik-Pik. He laughed as he put his hand on the Filipino’s shoulder and explained the necessity of keeping the approach clear whenever a plane was landing.

The man was surprised not to get chewed out by the pilot. Martin’s manner was disarming. Shortly after that, Pik-Pik began showing up for some of the Bible teachings.

By the next year, he had made his personal commitment to Jesus Christ. Just over a year after that, he started an outreach in a third village, where today there are some forty believers. A young man named Rodil from that little group is now a ministry associate of the missionaries, working with yet another nearby church, which has 120 members. In early 2003 Rodil married a young woman named Annie, who had come to Christ in that church.

As for Pik-Pik, he is today an elder in the church in his home village, still faithfully following Christ. His negativity and suspicion are gone. He continues to impact the lives of others for good. The chain continues—all because a man put his hand on Pik-Pik’s shoulder one day and treated him with gentleness.

*   *

I tell that story for the purpose of spotlighting a character trait that I believe made a huge difference in our year of captivity. When we were whisked away on the speedboat that fateful morning by a band of vicious terrorists, Martin’s graciousness did not change. Soon he was showing our captors how to set the watches and operate the camcorders they had stolen from our group. He smiled as he put four D-cell batteries in a row to recharge the fading satellite phone they wanted to use to call their comrades on shore. As the days and weeks wore on, he would sit with the guys and chat: “Which is your home province? What does your father do? Is your mother in good health?”

One young captor said he wanted to become a mechanic someday. Martin spent hours with him explaining how internal-combustion engines work and drawing sketches on bits of paper.

Another wanted to learn English. Martin became his tutor.

They all were curious about American dating customs, and whether boys and girls really find each other the way they’d seen in Hollywood movies. Again, Martin explained patiently, with a smile.

These days interviewers often ask me, somewhat nervously, “During the year, did the Abu Sayyaf ever, uh, abuse you as a woman?” I reply that no, I was spared from that particular horror. All five of the other female hostages who were held longer than a few weeks were eventually sabayaed—taken as “booty of war” by one or another of the warriors and forced to share his hammock. I alone was left unmolested.

Why? It was not that I was American whereas the others were Filipino; indeed, the captors showed no mercy whatsoever to our fellow American, Guillermo Sobero. They brutally beheaded him. It was not that I somehow fast-talked my way out of their evil schemes. I couldn’t even speak more than a few words in their various dialects.

Rather, I believe it was because I was the wife of that notably kind man. The terrorists genuinely liked Martin. They appreciated his generous spirit. They noted the soft twinkle in his eye, the caring words on his lips, and they could not bring themselves to violate his most cherished possession. When evening fell, they chained him to a tree but then left the two of us alone to rest together.

This is not to say that Martin had fallen into what psychologists call the Stockholm Syndrome, the propensity of hostages gradually to take their captors’ side, to embrace the twisted causes of those who are, after all, feeding and sheltering them day after day. Martin never approved of jihad; he never tilted in favor of the Abu Sayyaf’s radical agenda. In fact, he said to the leaders more than once, “Well, you know that I think what you’re doing is morally wrong.”

Martin rather gave evidence of what I might term the Jesus Syndrome: to walk through the midst of a cruel situation with poise and self-control, saying only what would edify and build up. He was able somehow to bless those who meant us harm—not just as a verbal pleasantry (the quick “God bless you” we often hear from entertainers and politicians) but in real and practical terms that left a lasting impact.

The Bible records this detail about Jesus early in his public ministry, “All who were there spoke well of him and were amazed by the gracious words that fell from his lips” (Luke 4:22). Even at the end, when vigilantes came to arrest him at night in the garden, Jesus kept a clear head and asked, “Whom are you looking for?” When they said they’d come for Jesus of Nazareth, he calmly replied, “I am he.” And these tough, murderous thugs “all fell backward to the ground!” (John 18:4-6). They didn’t know how to handle such calm in a man who obviously knew they had come to kill him.

The power of a gracious word is one of the mightiest forces in the universe.

*   *

When I speak to audiences these days, I frequently conclude with an old poem by Annie Johnson Flint (1866–1932) to highlight this theme. The literary style may evoke an earlier era, I know, but the message is for our time as well. God is looking for people to raise his gentle light in a foggy world. The poem says it this way:

His lamp am I, to shine where He shall say,

And lamps are not for sunny rooms,

Nor for the light of day;

But for dark places of the earth,

Where shame and crime and wrong have birth;

Or for the murky twilight gray

Where wandering sheep have gone astray;

Or where the light of faith grows dim,

And souls are groping after Him.

And as sometimes a flame we find,

Clear shining through the night,

So bright we do not see the lamp,

But only see the light:

So may I shine—His light the flame,

That men may glorify His name.[12]

During all our years of service in the Philippines, Martin and I never thought of ourselves as “the real missionaries.” We didn’t live in the midst of any tribe, learn their language, translate the Bible, or set up churches. Martin always said, “Hey, I’m just the driver. I move stuff around so the real missionaries can do their job.”

And yet . . . God used him to reach Pik-Pik and who knows how many others. God’s work does not depend upon superstars. When ordinary people offer their heart and hands and speech to the Master, he accomplishes more through them than anyone would predict.