Bump, bump, rattle, creak, groan. The car lurched and leaned, swerved and swung as it dodged craters as if it were driving on the surface of the moon. I don’t remember the road being quite this bad before, I mused. We had just returned from furlough, and the memories of smooth American highways were still fresh in my mind. Back home, we would pay big money at amusement parks for rides like this.
But this teeth-rattling, bone-jerking adventure got old fast as we drove this road day after day to shop for food and other essentials to sustain us in the village. Each day it seemed the ruts were getting deeper and the stretches of smooth pavement were shrinking. I knew things were getting bad when I would daydream about having a dump truck filled with hot asphalt, stopping to fill each gaping chasm. There is an old southern gospel song that played through my head sometimes as we jostled along: “No, no, it’s not an easy road.” Well, I thought, it would be a lot easier if somebody would just get out there and fill the holes. Then it hit me—that’s what God wants us to do.
The potholes in the road of life are many and varied. Death, sickness and crime are just a few. Each culture has its own unique ways of dealing with holes. Some fill them with dirt that gets washed out after heavy rains. Others hide them with sticks and branches. Still others just skirt around them.
But those who know will tell you that before you can pave a road for lasting smoothness, you need to put a lot of work into the ground beneath. Isaiah used an interesting metaphor when he prophesied of the coming Messiah. In chapter 40 of the book bearing his name, Isaiah wrote that there was much preparation to be done before the Promised One should come. He likened it to road construction, making a superhighway through the desert. Get out the earth movers, level hills and fill in valleys, making a smooth, straight road for our Lord. If the road had to be straight for the Messiah at His first coming as a humble baby, how much more important is the necessary roadwork before His second coming as King of Kings? I don’t mean to sound pompous, but we missionaries are God’s earthmovers. There are mountains of pride to be moved and valleys of inadequacy to be filled, first in us, then in the people we are called to reach.
The Gogodala team has discovered ruts, humps and hidden holes. For decades, it seems as if layers of Christianity were paved over the rutted path of Gogodala culture, giving a merely cosmetic change. But with weathering and time, the old holes beneath reappeared, deadlier than before.
Our work is mapped out. The Master’s charge is to lay the roadbed deep and straight, not to do what’s easiest. Spiritual road building includes cutting through mountains of superstition and establishing a good foundation on God’s word, understanding that, “it is God which worketh in [us] both to will and to do of His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). Only then will the results be lasting.

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