“Saved by the faithful effort of the One who Loves Us!”

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Sep 262021
 

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “Saved by the faithful effort of the One who Loves Us!”  

      The USS Astoria was a heavy cruiser that saw duty during World War II’s Battle of the Coral Sea and at Midway, then was sunk in August of 1942 at the Battle of Savo Island. On board in the fight for Savo was Signalman 3rd class Elgin Staples. Sometime around 2 a.m. on the ship’s final day, Staples was blown overboard when one of the Astoria’s gun turrets exploded. In the water, wounded in both legs by shrapnel and in a state of near-shock, Staples was kept afloat by a narrow lifebelt which he had activated by a trigger. In his book, The Grand Weaver, Ravi Zacharias tells the fascinating story of what happened next. Four hours after being blown into the Pacific, Staples was picked up by a passing destroyer and returned to the Astoria. Even though the cruiser had been severely damaged, her captain was trying to beach the ship in order to save her. When his attempts failed, Staples found himself back in the water. By now, it was noon. This time it was the USS President Jackson that plucked him out of the water. On board, Staples studied that little lifebelt which had saved his life twice that day. He noticed the belt was manufactured by the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio, and carried a registration number. Allowed to go home for a visit, Staples related his story to the family and asked his mother, who worked for Firestone, the purpose of the registration number on the belt. She pointed out that the company was holding employees responsible for their work in the war effort, and that each worker had his/her own number. Staples recalled everything about that lifebelt, including the registration number. As he called it out, his mother’s eyes grew large. She said, “That was my personal code that I put on every item I was responsible for approving!” His mother had made the belt which had saved his life twice. Ravi Zacharias concludes, “The one who gave him birth and whose DNA he bore gave him rescue in the swirling waters that threatened to take his life. If an earthly parent playing the role of procreation can provide a means of rescue without knowing when and for whom that belt would come into play, how much more can the God of all creation accomplish?”  I like to think of such accounts as a miniature photo of the Heavenly Father caring for His own. God said, “But now, thus says the Lord, who created you, O Jacob, and He who formed you, O Israel, ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you… I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake; and I will not remember your sins.’” (Isaiah 43:1-2,25)

Our Lord Jesus said, “When (the shepherd) puts forth his own sheep, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice… I am the good shepherd, and I know my sheep and am known by my own. As the Father knows me, even so I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep.” (John 10:3-4,14-15)

     I didn’t want to end this article with that story, as excellent as it is. This lesson needs a little more to “set” it. So, after combing through the books on various shelves of my office, I turned to Mark Buchanan’s Things Unseen, where he tells this story:

     William M. Dyke became blind when he was ten. In his early 20s, attending grad school in England, he fell in love with the daughter of a British admiral and they planned to marry. Her father, however, agreed to the marriage only if Dyke would submit to surgery that could possibly restore his sight. He agreed, on one condition. He did not want the gauze removed from his eyes until the moment he met his bride at the altar. He wanted her face to be the first thing he looked upon with his new sight. There was the risk, of course, that the surgery would fail and he would see nothing. He was willing to take the chance. After the surgery, the day of the wedding came. As the parents led the bride and groom together at the altar of the church, William’s father removed the gauze from his eyes. Until that moment, no one knew if the surgery had worked.

When the last strand of the gauze was taken away, William Dyke was face-to-face with his bride. The wedding party was speechless and breathless. Then William spoke: “You are more beautiful than I ever imagined.”

     Buchanan writes, “One day that will happen to us, only the roles will be reversed. ‘Now we see but a poor reflection in a mirror,’ Paul says, ‘then we shall see face to face. Now I know (Him) in part; then I shall know (Him) fully, even as I am fully known’ (I Corinthians 13:12). One day, the Bride of Christ, near blind now, will stand before her Bridegroom at the Wedding Feast, and the veil will be removed, the scales will fall away, and we will see Him face-to-face and know Him even as we are fully known.”

“And He will be more beautiful than we ever imagined.”  AMEN AND AMEN!

 Posted by at 12:28 pm

MARK TWAIN-LINCOLN OF LITERATURE BUT SPIRITUAL SHIPWRECK?

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Sep 192021
 

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE:  MARK TWAIN-LINCOLN OF LITERATURE BUT SPIRITUAL SHIPWRECK?

     Everybody loves Mark Twain.  Every school boy and girl enjoyed reading The Adventures Tom Sawyer, and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  Both give us insight to what it was like growing up in Hannibal, Missouri in the mid 1800’s. The Family Encyclopedia of American History says, “if the 19th Century American dream has a single literary laureate, it is Samuel Clemens, known by his pen name, Mark Twain”.   Literary critic Edgar Wagenknect concurred when he wrote, “Mark Twain is incomparably the dominating personality in American literature, the mightiest figure in American mythology”.  Ernest Hemingway, in The Green Hills of Africa asserted that, “Huckleberry Finn was both the first and best book in American Literature and Mark Twain began to be viewed as the writer’s writer”.  Likewise, William Faulkner told Japanese students that “Mark Twain was really the father of American Literature”. Longtime friend, and literary critic William Dean Howe, speaking at Twain’s funeral, said “Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of Literature.”   Those comments affirm the greatness of Mark Twain.

     I was introduced to Twain in High School English literature, but really became familiar with him while attending college in his home town of Hannibal, Missouri.  Everyone who came to visit us asked us to take them to Mark Twain’s boyhood home, and of course to visit and tour the Mark Twain Cave.  Such exposure to those places enriched your life with the very things he wrote about, and made them literally come to life!  What most do not realize is that Mark Twain grew up in a very Christian home, and was saturated with the Christian faith, a faith he struggled greatly with, and was never really able to fully embrace.  His father, John Marshall Clemens, was a free thinker who never saw the necessity of embracing Christianity, until on his death bed, when asked by the Pastor, “do you believe in Christ, and trust His saving blood to save you?’ the elder Clemens responded, “I do!”  Twain’s mother, Jane Clemens, was a very involved Christian, who took her children religiously to Sunday School, first in the Methodist Church, and later to the Presbyterian Church in Hannibal.  She read the Bible to them daily and sought to share her faith with them, though her faith was characterized by the non-traditional habits of pipe-smoking, and dancing, with occasional ventures into odd forms of religion that was novel to the culture of Hannibal in the mid 1800’s.  Twain once claimed that “he knew the Bible well enough by two weeks old, to protest being named Samuel, after a boy whom the Lord had to call…a couple of times before he would come!”: (a reference to I Samuel 3:1-10). Twain illustrated what his Sunday School experience was like in chapter 4 of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.  Most commentators refer to Twain’s Sunday School indoctrination as an influence that proved unshakable for him to his dying day.  John Gerber asserted, “The Calvinistic doctrines of the depravity of man and predestination created an intellectual context from which he never escaped. Yet Samuel Clemens was never a believer in the orthodox sense.”

     Clemens fell in love with, and married his sweetheart, Olivia Langdon.  Olivia grew up in a Christian home, as was a dedicated Christian. Olivia had been an invalid, as a girl, and had been healed by a faith healer named Dr. Newton, which restored her to activity.  Aware of her faith, in a letter of proposal to her, Clemens assured her that if she married him their home would be a Christian home.  He wrote, “…Livy, we’ll model our home after your old home, and make the Spirit of Love lord over the entire realm…we will turn toward the Cross and be comforted-I turn with you-What would you have more? The Peace of God shall rest upon us and all will be well!” During that engagement time Twain was reading the Bible nightly and praying, as well as corresponding with his sweetheart over sermons that he had been reading.  When the couple first married, they read the Bible together, said grace at meals, and all seemed to be going as promised.  But the influence of his Pastor, Thomas Beecher, brother to Henry Ward Beecher, far more liberal than his famous brother, began to have a detrimental affect on Twain.  Twain began to doubt the faith he was raised in.  The atmosphere of their Christian home soon changed as he announced to Livy, “I don’t believe the Bible-it contradicts my reason!”  This reversal of his religious fervor began to show up in his writings.  Through the mouth of Tom Sawyer he said, “I…have got religion and wish to be quit of it and lead an honest life again!”  His biographer writes, the early years of engagement and marriage to Olivia Langdon, “he came the closet to making a real connection with genuine Christianity”.   His departure from his early faith began to take a toll on his wife.  On one occasion she said she no longer believed, and “That if he was going to hell, she wanted to go with him!” She modeled herself after her beloved husband, and began to “smoke and curse!”  He was amused at her efforts, and remarked that “she knew the words and lyrics, but not the melody!”   Later, when she was ill, and dying, he encouraged her to lean on her faith, and her response was “I no longer have any faith!” Twain never forgave himself of causing her to abandon her faith, because of him. He began to have terrifying dreams in which his family are lost in the dark aboard a ship with no pilot and rudder, as a result of his poor example leading them to abandon their faith.  Allison Ensor concluded, “I believe that the evidence shows that Twain’s orthodoxy reached it zenith late in 1868 and early 1869, and after that period he abandoned all penchant for Bible reading and hat-tipping in that direction”.  In 1878, while on a trip to Europe with a Pastor friend, Rev. Joseph Twitchell, Twain confessed, “I have been almost a believer, but it immediately drifts away from me again, I don’t believe a word of your Bible was inspired by God any more than any other book.”

   In spite of that confession, Twain often admitted that he could never get away from his “trained Presbyterian conscience!”

     Twain’s brother Henry was severely injured in an explosion on the steamboat Pennsylvania, a boat that Twain was supposed to be piloting that day, but had to ask Henry to fill in for him, due to unknown circumstances.  Twain sat by his bedside for six days nursing him after the explosion, until Henry died.  Twain wrote a letter to his brother Orion’s wife Millie, and revealed how broken he was over the accident.  He wrote, on June 21, 1858, “lost and ruined sinner that I am-I even, I have humbled myself to the ground, and prayed as never a man has prayed before, that the Great God might let this cup pass from me-the He would strike me to the earth, but spare my brother-that He would pour out the fulness of His just wrath on my wicked head, but have mercy, mercy, mercy upon that unoffending boy.  The horrors of these three days have swept over me-they have blasted my youth and left me an old man before my time. Mollie there are grey hairs in my head tonight. For forty-eight hours I have labored at the bedside of my poor burned and bruised, but uncomplaining brother, and then the star of my hope went out and left me in despair.  Then poor wretched me, that was once proud, was humbled to the very dust-for the vilest of beggars in the streets of St. Louis could never conceive a humiliation like mine.  Men take me by the hand and congratulate me, and call me lucky because I was not on the Pennsylvania when she blew up!  My God forgive them, for they know not what they say!”  Mark Twain, and his faith, continues to be a paradox to all who study him.  Winston Churchill called Russia, “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”.  That is a good description of Mark Twain and his faith.

     Twain’s “trained Presbyterian conscience” showed up clearly in his writings.  His book The Prince and Pauper is beyond question an allegory about the Incarnation of Christ, and is a good commentary on Philippians 2:5-11.  His book The Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court continues that imagery.  Even Puddin’Head Wilson has subtle illustration of the Incarnation.  Of course, his Joan of Arc praises her as the greatest Christian ever to live, second only to Jesus Himself.  Twain’s objection to Christianity seems more about the failure of most Christians to live out a genuine faith.  He said, “If Christ were here today, the one thing he would not be is a Christian!” Mark Twain was the personification of wit and wisdom to his generation.  He famously shared the word, “better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt!”.  A bit of wisdom President Lincoln lived by, and repeated often.  He said, “I never rejoiced over anyone’s death, or wished someone dead, but I have often read certain obituaries with a smile.” One obituary he read with a smile might have been his own.  While touring Europe, to raise money for some financial burdens, it was rumored that he was in poor health, and near death.  It was actually true of his cousin James Rose Clemens.  When his cousin died, it was mistakenly reported by Frank Marshall White, of the New York Journal, that Twain had died.  Upon reading it Twain wrote Marshall and said, “The report of my demise has been greatly exaggerated!”. 

     In 1835 Haley’s comet made it periodic visit. Mark Twain arrived at the same time.  As the time of its return drew closer, in 1909Twain remarked, “It’s coming again next year, and the Almighty has said n doubt, these two unaccountable freaks came in together, they must go out together!” His words were very prophetic, for on April 21, 1910, the report of his demise was this time accurate, and the world lost the Lincoln of Literature, and their author that no one saw a in freak.  James Hefley, Christian author, and later the Professor of Writing at Hannibal-LaGrange College, in Twain’s home town of Hannibal wrote many articles of the impact of Twain.  In his article The Wit and Tragedy of Mark Twain, detailed how if Twain had embraced the Christian faith with his heart instead of his head, he would have found the secret to making his faith genuine.  Had he done that he might have had a spiritual impact on his world not unlike his contemporary William Jennings Bryan.  He writes that Twain had a clear understanding of the doctrine of the new birth, and salvation by grace, that he was taught by his mother in life, and his father on his death bed, but ne never, as far as we can be sure, ever embraced it personally for himself. To his dying day, though he doubted at times the reality of heaven, he never questions the reality of hell and feared many, himself included, might experience that tragedy when he died.

     His later years, after losing Livy, and his children, Twain wrote in his autobiography, published only after his death, by his own wishes, these depressing pessimistic words: “A myriad of men are born; they labor and struggle and sweat for bread; they squabble and scold and fight; they scramble for little mean advantages over each other.  Age creeps upon them and infirmities follow; shame and humiliation bring down their pride and vanities.  Those that they love are taken from them, and the joy of life is turned into an aching grief.  The burden of pain, care, and misery grows heavier year by year. At length ambition is dead; longing for relief takes its place.  It comes at last, the only unpoisioned gift earth has for them-and they vanish away from a world where they achieved nothing, where they were of no consequence, where they were a mistake, and a failure and a foolishness; where they left no sign they ever existed-a world that will lament them for a day, and forget them forever!”

     On his last trip to Europe his itinerary had him meeting nearly every dignitary of Europe.  After meeting the Chancellor of Germany, his daughter Jean was so impressed with her famous father that she said, “Papa if this keeps up there won’t be anybody else for you to meet except God!”  He certain had every opportunity to do so with all of his exposure to the Christian faith.  It would be a real American tragedy if he never did.  Perhaps he, like his father, on his own death bed, finally had a change of heart, and like he promised Livy, made his way to the cross he often talked about, and found the peace of God that seemed to allude him.  One never knows.  His pen name-Mark Twain, was the most important call to be heard on a steamboat.  If mean that the water was deep enough to avoid being shipwrecked on the river.  It would be a real tragedy to be so named and end up making a shipwreck of his own faith.  This American Lincoln of Literature gives us the ultimate lesson not just for his 19th century, but for the new millennium of the 21st century as well! Mark Twain!

 Posted by at 12:27 pm

“WATCH OUT FOR SATAN’S INNOCULATION!”

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Sep 122021
 

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE:  “WATCH OUT FOR SATAN’S INNOCULATION!”

     I remember playing football my freshman year of High School at Decatur MacArthur High School.  Our Coach Jerry Curtis told us something important.  It had to do with playing in such a way to “give your all”.  Now, as a good football coach prepares his high school players for the season, he’s going to bring up the dangers of what he will call playing tentatively. I know no one’s anxious to get hurt, and so there’s a natural tendency to hold back a little in a contact sport; to hold back when you hit, when you block, when you tackle. But the coach is going to tell you that “the best way to get hurt is to play tentatively, half-heartedly. Either give it all you’ve got or don’t play

     The verse I chose for the Pastor’s Perspective today is from Ecclesiastes 9:10; a verse that could be one of those life-principle verses like maybe a good wall plaque. It’s almost a motto that you could repeat to yourself at work, and in sports, or while you’re doing your homework, while you’re doing dirty work, while you’re listening to someone, or you’re trying to finish a job. It’s one of those repeat over and over statements. Ecclesiastes 9:10, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.”

     Well, that’s consistent with four words that appear over and over in the Bible, “with all your heart.” Whatever you do, do it with all your heart, or in this case with all your might. One of my personal heroes is Jim Elliott, who was a missionary that in the 1950s was one of five American missionaries martyred as they went to a tribe that had never even heard the name of God. And out of that martyrdom came a flow of missionaries and people in Christian service. Well, one of Jim Elliott’s mottos went like this (you ready?), “Wherever you are, be all there.” Somebody may have said to you, “You’re not all there.”   Perhaps that’s true!  Have you checked? Well, yes, wherever you are, be all there. If you’ve got something to do anyway, why not do it with all you’ve got? If you’ve got to be there, why not be there with all your heart?

     There’s a little wisdom I saw on a plaque in a kitchen years ago. It said, “Lord, help me do with a smile the things I have to do anyway.” Got to do them anyway, might as well really do them. A Christian should be known as a “hundred percenter” in everything he or she does. You listen with all your might. When it’s time to work, you work with all your might. When you pray, you pray with all your might. When you play, you play with all your might. When you goof off, you goof off with all your might. When you help somebody, you help with all your might. When you study, oh yeah, you know by now, yeah, you do it with all your might.

     I think that is a major problem with our Christianity these days!  Even in Tri Valley Baptist Church!  Yes, even in our Church.  We need to ask ourselves the question-could it be that we are not having the impact that God wants us to have on our community because we are not “hundred percenters”?  Listen to what Chad Walsh had to say about that in his very convicting book about Christianity in the 21st century. In his book, Early Christians of the Twenty-first Century, Chad Walsh wrote:

Millions of Christians live in a sentimental haze of vague piety, with soft organ music trembling in the lovely light from the stained glass windows. Their religion is a thing of pleasant emotional quivers divorced from the intellect, divorced from the will, and demanding little except lip service to a few harmless platitudes. I suspect that Satan has called off the attempt to convert people to agnosticism. If a man travels far enough away from Christianity, he is always in danger of seeing it in perspective and deciding that it is true. It is much safer from Satan’s point of view to vaccinate a man with a case of mild Christianity so as to protect him from the real thing.

     Inoculation is the introducing of a micro-organism into the human bodies’ blood stream to prevent the contracting of a disease. This is commonly known as a vaccine! In other words, they take the dead virus (such as small pox) and inject it into your body in the form of a serum. Since the virus is dead, it doesn’t hurt you. The dead virus cells cause your body’s healthy cells to build up immunity to that particular virus. Now you are safe from the virus. We should be thankful to the Lord for such medical advancements. Fifty years ago, many children died because of small pox, or polio. Today those diseases are rare in this country, if not non-existent!

     Is that what the problem is?  Satan has vaccinated us with a “mild strain” of Christianity to keep us from showing the “real thing” to the world?  We must face that question honestly, and repent if we are going to make any impact in these “last days”.  I remember hearing Howard Hendricks, at the Second Baptist Church of Houston, Texas tell a class full of us students, “Gentleman, if we want them (our Churches and the lost in the world) to bleed, we are going to have to hemorrhage!  If we want them to have the real disease, we are going to have to infect them with more than a dead virus, that will only inoculate them from the real thing!”  A young man came up to Charles Spurgeon and asked him how he could make his Church grow like Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Chapel had.  Spurgeon said, “It is quite simple young man.  Next Sunday, when you go into your pulpit, pour kerosene over your head, light a match, and people will come to watch you burn!”  That is what Spurgeon did!  Not literally of course!  But he was a “hundred percenter”!  He gave his all.  He hemorrhaged!  He had the “real disease” of which there is no cure!  Some people just seem like they “can’t live for the Lord” and others see like they “can’t help but live for the Lord”, The Lord is looking for the latter!  Surrender yourself today to “be there” but “be all there”!  If you’re going to be “in the game” don’t play tentatively-“play all out, or don’t play!”  Amen?  God is counting on us!  We dare not let him down!

 Posted by at 12:23 pm

GOD’S PLODDER-PERFORMING THE DISCHARGE OF SMALL DUTIES…RESULTING IN GREAT THINGS FOR GOD.

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Sep 052021
 

By: Ron Woodrum

     The father of modern missions is William Carey, a Baptist missionary in the late 1700’s who gave his life to reaching the Hindu world of India.  William Carey was born in England on August 17, 1761.  His early life was spent as an apprentice to a shoe cobbler (repairing shoes). He gave his life to Christ on February 10, 1779…not quite 18 years old.  He joined the Baptist Church in 1783, being baptized by Dr. John Rylands.  While repairing shoes this uneducated man taught himself Greek and Hebrew in order to study the Scriptures in their original languages.  His aggressive study of the Bible soon led to a call to the ministry and in 1789 he became Pastor of the Harvey Lane Baptist Church.  He read a book, by a fellow Baptist Pastor Andrew Fuller titled The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, and was moved by one line in the book…”If it is the duty of all men to believe whenever the gospel is presented to them, it must be the duty of all who have received the Gospel to endeavor to make it universally known!” That line convinced Carey that the Gospel needed to be shared with the heathen all across the world who had never heard.  He built a leather globe of the world, and while repairing shoes, sought God’s direction about how to relieve this heart burden for the world.  Once a month Baptist ministers met for prayer, Bible study, and fellowship.  Carey was asked to share at one of those meetings.  He shared his view of how Genesis 12:1-3 demanded that we bless the world with the Gospel.  He felt that Matthew 28:19-20 was a binding commission for the Church to obey.  While preaching on this subject to his fellow Baptist ministers, Dr. Ryland, the very one that had baptized him, interrupted him and said, “Sit down young man and be still!  When God wants to convert the heathen, He will do it without consulting either you or me!”  That caused Carey to study the Scriptures even more over the next eight years, and resulted in him printing a pamphlet entitled “An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to use means for the conversion of the Heathen”.  His theme verse became Isaiah 54:5 “Thy Redeemer…The God of All The Earth shall He be Called”. Carey came in contact with a surgeon John Thomas who had returned from India, and was so moved with their lostness he was baptized, ordained and intended to return to the country to share the gospel.  Carey’s friend Andrew Fuller heard John Thomas say “India was a veritable Gold mine, but was as deep as the center of the earth”. Thomas asked “who will go down?”  Andrew shared that with Carey.  Carey responded, “I will if you will hold the ropes!”  Just before Carey left to go to his missionary work in India he preached a farewell sermon in which he declared that we should “Expect Great Things From God, and Attempt Great Things For God!”  Those were his intentions.

     He left for India in 1793.  It took them five months to sail to India.  During this time Carey was learning Bengali.  He took his wife, and sons William, Felix, and Peter with him.  His wife only went reluctantly.  The first event was his five year old son Peter died to disease.  Dorothy, his wife, suffered a mental breakdown and would spend the next 14 years on the mission field battling fits of insanity.  The work was hard.  In order to support their work Carey worked as a manager of an Indigo plant for six years.  He worked during the day, and learned the languages and dialects during the nights.  He translated the Bible into Bengali, and forty other languages.  Just before he completed the Bengali translation, a fire destroyed all his laborious work.  He had no choice but to begin it all again.  It took seven years to see his first Hindu convert in 1800.  His wife Dorothy finally passed in 1807.  His son Felix forsook the mission work to become an Ambassador for the government.  Carey wrote home to supporters, “Felix has shrunk from a missionary to an ambassador!”  Carey was known for his patience and perseverance.  He founded the Christian Church of India, the school system, including females in his education process, the postal system.  This self-educated missionary translated the Scriptures into over 40 languages known to India, and printed 213,000 Bibles.  Carey called himself “God’s Plodder!”   He wrote, “If He give me credit for being a plodder He will describe me justly.  Anything beyond that will be too much.  I can plod.  I can persevere in any definite pursuit.  To this I owe everything”.  He reminds me of what Alexander MacLaren wrote-“We have all of a few moments in life of hard, glorious running; but we have days and years of walking-the uneventful discharge of small duties”.  The steady plodding and discharging of those small duties enabled William Carey to “Accomplish Great Things for God!”  The same is true for us.  Just before he died in 1834 he wrote home to supporters and said, “Say nothing about Dr. Carey-speak about Dr. Carey’s God”. On one occasion a British ambassador tried to embarrass Carey by asking “haven’t you been a shoemaker for most of your life?”  Carey responded, “Not a shoemaker-a shoe cobbler.  I repair shoes”.  He was a humble servant of God.  His tombstone had only these words:  William Carey.  Born August 17, 1761.  Died June 9, 1834.  “A poor wretched worm-on Thy kind arms I fall”. 

     I came across a quote the other day by Joseph Parker.  I believe it fits William Carey, and all who endeavor missionary work which can take so long to lay the foundation and see fruit.  Joseph Parker wrote: “Is God all wise?  Then the darkest providences have meaning.  We will set ourselves as God’s interpreters, and because we cannot make straight lines out of our crooked lot, we think that God has turned our life into inextricable confusion.  The darkest hours in our life have some intent, and it is really not needful that we should know all at once what that intent is.  Let us keep within our own little sphere, and live a day at a time, and breathe a breath at a time, and be content with one pulsation at a time, and interpretation will come when God pleases, and as He pleases.”

 Posted by at 10:36 pm