An Unlikely Likely Friend

The face is stern and the beard perhaps imposing.  But it's not these features that bring me here this day.

The gate is close but unlocked, which is a good thing, because there's actually no bell despite what the sign instructs.

There's no caretaker in sight either, although a simple house does sit just inside the wall.  We have to call out and walk all the way to the back of the building before we see a woman hanging out her wash to dry in the sun on bamboo poles in the yard.  "Chai.  Chai.  Poochai farang tee nee," she assures us. "Yes, Yes. That white man is here."  And smiling, she gestures vaguely in a general direction, leaving us to search him out for ourselves.

It won't be a problem.  The cemetery is small, simply kept but not unattended.  The sparse grass is short, and the grounds are free of litter and leaves.   Some headstones are quite new with shiny plaques and recent dates.  One grave is a brown mound of just-buried.

But it's the older markers that have our attention.

Yupa finds him first.

"IN LOVING MEMORY OF

REV. DANIEL McGILVARY, D.D. LLD,

Founder of Christian Missions 

in North Siam.

Born in North Carolina, U.S.A. May 14, 1828

Died in Chiengmai, August 22, 1911

I approach to get a picture, then stand again.  And quite suddenly I am overcome.

This man!

Half A Century Among the Siamese and the Lao was something of a last minute reading selection for my current course of study on 'Paul the Missionary Pastor'.  When considering the weight limits for all I needed to pack for school, it truly was only because I'd purchased a kindle version that the book even came along.   I wasn't sure an autobiography would yield as much academically as the assignment required, and it was after all, printed in 1912.  Hardly cutting edge.  

Except.  No.

Not satisfied to have made the one hundred day journey from America to Bangkok (Lord forgive my complaints about my 24 hours of air travel!), he and his wife got in a boat and navigated no end of dangers, not the least was the river itself, to end up in Chiang Mai.  They were the first Christians ever to do so.  From there, despite isolation, primitive living conditions, sickness and even at one point the threat of execution, Daniel McGilvary would travel by elephant, literally hacking his way through the jungle (hardly cutting edge?), to reach the outlying regions of Chiang Rai, Wiang Pa Pao and other places I've been.  [On a personal note, it's interesting how often he refers to these as "regions beyond", since this was the phrase we adopted at Highview very soon after my return from that first trip here, now twelve years ago.]

A skilled Christian theologian, his respect for all people, and particularly for the Buddhist mind, is stunning, and no doubt factored heavily into why he was so well received by royalty and village folk alike.  He learned their language and taught them to read it.  He became knowledgeable in basic medicine to alleviate the unnecessary suffering he encountered almost everywhere.  He was a favoured guest in royal Siamese palaces.  He was a favourite of the children.   Noticing that boys were educated in the Buddhist monasteries, but girls were not, he and his wife began a Girls School that evolved eventually into a sought after university.  It's hard not to find some hospital, school or church in old downtown Chiang Mai that doesn't have some connection with the McGilvaries and the Presbyterian mission they represented.

As I immerse myself in his nineteenth century prosaic style, writing with all the statesmanship of a Princeton Seminarian, even with all that and about 170 years between us, I shyly find myself making a new friend.  I recognize place names.  His descriptions of culture and climate I completely understand.  And the matter of fact way he propels himself forward in courage and faith, I find inspire me onward too.

He loved my people.  My people were his people.  More accurately, his people have become my people. 

This is why my heart is now all caught up in my throat, standing here beside his grave.  Just to be this close to this brilliant, passionate, hard core servant of God ---

I ask if we could stop for a prayer so we do.  And midst the sound of the softly murmured prayers of my Thai beloveds, and the background noise of a city so different than what first met the McGilvarys, it occurs to me that likely I would not be here and Suradet and Yupa would not be here and Hot Springs Church and the many beautiful Thai Christians in the north would not be here had it not been for this man and his brave-beyond-imagining wife who came and lived out their best lives to the end, in the name of Jesus.  

So now I'm just crying. 

Thank You Jesus for bringing this incredible couple here more than a century ago.

Thank You Jesus for bringing me here now.
Thank You for taking the faithfulness of Your servants and turning it into something beyond what any of us can hope or imagine.

It's time to go.  But as we do I try to imagine the procession coming through the gate on the day Daniel McGilvary was laid to rest.  It is described by Arthur J. Brown, friend and co-labourer, in the forward of the book.

"The Lao country had never seen such a funereal as that which marked the close of this memorable life.  Princes, Governors, and High Commissioners of State sorrowed with multitudes of common people.  The business of  Chiengmai was suspended, offices were closed, and flags hung at half-mast as the silent form of the great missionary was borne to its last resting place in the land to which he was the first bringer of enlightenment, and whose history can never be truly written without large recognition of his achievements."

Of all his words, this one quote stands out to reveal his heart.

"How near of kin is all the world."  

Daniel McGilvary