Wallace Lock
Love on the Fly
Wallace Lock has travel plans. He’s drawn a bull’s eye in a five-mile radius around Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova, TN. He and his wife, Kam, and the rest of his Sunday school class warriors are GOING IN. Travel dates: April 17-19, 2019, Easter weekend. Luggage: sacks full of LWF tracts. Agenda: share the only love worth finding.
But God changes the Locks’ itinerary.
“I’m teaching on prayer on March 31st and God puts a hook in my mouth,” Wallace explains. “He tells me that most people pray when someone is sick. I don’t know why that sticks with me.”
Fast forward three days. An ominous text, a real suitcase (he tosses in the tracts), a sprint to the airport, and Wallace and Kam are flying to a London borough for Easter. His brother, Bill, on a spring break trip to Dublin with his family, is in a drug-induced coma following a massive heart attack at London’s Heathrow Airport.
During the flight, Wallace pulls out his prayer passport. “I tell God, ‘I’m not going to be there with my class. They’re leaving Judea and going to Samaria. I’m going to the uttermost.’ I tell Him I’m worried about my brother. Will he wake up? Will he be damaged? God says, ‘You take care of my business. I’ll take care of your business.”
The Locks journey takes them to a pint-sized hospital waiting room in close quarters with the Hindu mother and Muslim wife of another man in a coma. The women are praying to separate false Gods. Wallace recalls God’s hook about sick-room prayer. “God nudges me. So I say, ‘We’re all here for a reason. Someone we love is messed up. That’s why we’re praying. But the prayer needs to go somewhere. I use the tracts to share the real God.”
“In hospital,” as the Brits say, over the next two weeks, the young man’s mother and wife come to Christ, along with a rehab nurse who is caring for Wallace’s now-awake and recovering brother (a miracle, the doctor’s note).
Out on the streets, Wallace accidentally karate-chops a Londoner while pointing out to Kam the numbered bus they must board. “Surprise”! The “wounded” man takes a seat on the same bus. Wallace takes the opportunity to apologize, which leads to sharing Christ. “Coincidentally” the same man is on a different bus with the Locks days later (in a city of 8.8 million people). “I read the tract you gave me and found the love of Jesus,” he reports.
At Wallace and Kam’s hotel, a young man named Andy from India, the product of a rape who has been ostracized by both the high caste of his father and the low caste of his mother, “happens” to sit near the Locks every morning at breakfast. Wallace is, of course, nudged, both at the hotel, and at a café on a separate day when Andy is seated near him once more (again, among 8.8 million).
Wallace calls these appointments (there are several others on this trip) “God Winks.” He says they’re available to every believer. It’s a profound truth Wallace learned well from the late Dr. Adrian Rogers, who served as the Locks’ pastor while they were raising their three now-grown sons, and who still teaches the Locks through Love Worth Finding.
God’s working all over the world, Wallace says. He’s “winking.” We just have to keep our eyes open.
P.S. Wallace and Kam returned to the U.S. in late April. His brother is healing. Life is good. But he’s hoping for at least one more British “God-Wink.” As of this writing, the Locks are headed to Israel on a dream vacation, with a stop planned in France and another in London. “We still have some breakfast tickets at the hotel,” he says. “Andy may still be there. He’s writing a book about the misery of not being loved. I’m hoping to change that story.”
