The far north fascinates me. I’m drawn by the landscape – that expansively beautiful and inhospitable world, so far removed from my home in busy Manchester – and the people who somehow survive there, with their skidoos and planes and snow houses. And their stories.
So when it comes to a book about mission in the Canadian Arctic, there’s no need to offer it twice. Jack Turner: Truth in the Arctic is about the life and ministry of Canon Jack Turner, who served with BCMS (as Crosslinks was then known) on Baffin Island in the 1930s and 1940s. This biography is aimed at young teens, but there’s an embarrassment of riches in it for adults as well. David Luckman includes the kind of stories that draw me – tales of the Polar Night and igloo-building and long journeys on sledges drawn by huskies. He describes how the Canon boldly proclaimed the gospel to both the eager and the hostile – including, in the latter camp, a witch doctor who did not want his authority usurped by Jesus (p. 96).
The challenge with these fantastic stories is the very thing that attracts me to them. The difference between Jack Turner’s context and mine is what makes his biography so appealing. But that same distinction can also serve to establish a dissonance between him and me. Since his context was worlds away from mine, it’s all too simple to assume that he was completely different from me as well. It’s easy to forget that the heart that served in ‘the icy rugged wilds’ (p. 39) was just like mine, as though God’s grace somehow becomes less necessary overseas than it is at home in the UK.
This fallacy of mine is frequently challenged by Jack Turner. From the beautiful account of Ellen Turner’s prayers for her wayward son (p. 28) to Jack’s rallying of prayer support for his ministry (pp. 42, 72) to his own prayers for himself and his parishioners (pp. 67, 99), Jack Turner consistently demonstrates its subject’s need for the Lord to work in him and through him.
My biggest challenge comes from the tragedy with which the narratives opens and closes. Accidentally shot in the head, Jack – hundreds of miles from the nearest hospital and in an area ‘so remote [that] there were no maps’ (p. 17) to guide any rescuers – urgently needs medical attention. The story of Jack’s extraction from Moffet Inlet is a beautiful one, full of incredible grace, courage and self-sacrifice.
It is also full of prayer. Jack Turner describes how the news spread across Canada through the radio (p. 16) and it also records the response: ‘Thousands of people throughout Canada were upholding the Turners in prayer’ (p. 126). This desperately injured man was as unknown to many of these people as he was to the Canadian military forces who went to his rescue (p. 17) – and yet these Christians devoted themselves to prayer on his behalf.
This is where the challenge becomes personal for me. Thirty years ago, seriously ill with meningitis, I had the same privilege of being prayed for both by loved ones and by faraway Christians who didn’t know me. My godmother Sheila wrote to my parents to express her love and concern for our family. She also wrote that Bob – her husband, who was serving as a missionary in Pakistan at the time – had shared my situation with local Christians, ‘so be assured,’ Sheila wrote, ‘that some Pakistani Christians will be praying for Francesca as well.’
My context may well have seemed as remote to these wonderful Pakistani Christians as the Arctic does to me. And yet their prayers have had a lasting impact on my life. Most obviously, God restored me to health! I took no lasting damage from my encounter with meningitis, and I know that was in answer to the many prayers on my behalf. More subtly, their legacy is an enduring impression of (and thankfulness for) Christians’ interdependence. Those serving the Lord overseas are separated from us by geographical distance as well as by their day-to-day context, as Jack Turner reminds us. But the Lord chooses to shape their lives and ministries through our prayers – and, as Jack and I can both testify, the same is true in reverse.
Let me commend Jack Turner to you. Savour the adventures. Enjoy the differences between your life and Jack’s. Be encouraged by how the Lord uses prayer to unite his people, no matter what lies between them. And pray for your partners in the gospel. One day – whether in your lifetime or after you’ve gone to glory – you’ll discover how the Lord has answered your prayers.
Jack Turner: Truth in the Arctic is by David Luckman, former Ireland Director for Crosslinks. It’s part of the Trailblazer series of Christian biographies, which are aimed at 10 – 14 year olds. You can buy a copy at https://www.christianfocus.com/products/3005/jack-turner