CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER ONE
PEN OF A READY WRITER
SOBEL KUHN closed the large loose-leaf binder she had been a as she wrote the preceding chapters.
"Well," she sighed, "I just can't do any more. I can't see plainly enough. I haven't the strength to go on."
She had done her final writing. It was the eighth of her now published book-length manuscripts.
And she laid down her pen.
It was an old one. For years it had worked hard for her. Miles and miles her thoughts had driven it back and forth over endless ages.
7 With eyes fixed on her one vision, Isobel had used her pen most purposefully. It had gleaned Bible notes and scattered them around, reaping a soul-crop by the way. It had collected inspiring quotations and sung them out to the faint-hearted, teaching, warning and encouraging them.
Friends and fellow-missionarics as well as nationals were inspired by Isobel's personal letters. "She rejoiced with those who rejoiced and wept with those who wept," commented
Edna McLaren, one of the workers of the North Thailand team.
"Her letters were a blessing and a challenge to the very highest, with always that rare combination of human humour and dee spirituality—never 'sermony' letters, but just a phrase, ora ar quotation was left to bring its own challenge.'
The "rare combination" had showed itself early in Isobel's ' missionary career. There it was even in her very first form-letter from China, headed Yangchow, December 24, 1928. That letter was charted so well that twenty-five years of her remarkably acceptable "circulars" plied much the same course. An immediate play for attention, some pleasantry and words of appreciation gave the letter a good start.
"Christmas Eve in China!
. Santa Claus will need his umbrella and galoshes tonight." With this easy approach her
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friendship sailed through to the hearts of far-away acquaintances.
She avoided en route all the icebergs of formal introductory sentences.
Then followed word pictures, well focused, of the work and workers around her. Some of these seemed to be taken in full sun, some in shadow. There were spots of wit and nudges of challenge, reaches for prayer help, mentions of God's goodness.
Of all her subsequent writing, there was hardly a page that did — not include these same elements. Besides, she always tucked in Bible promises and bits of inspiration in the form of poetry, well chosen.
Intuitively Isobel seemed to make the intimate approach to her audience that draws forth an intimate response.
Sometimes parts of her letters were as uninhibited as neighbourly chit-chat over the garden fence. That made them most acceptable. Somewhat bulky, too! She did not stop to strip them of unnecessary words. Yet the trivialities she included mixed themselves into a picture unique in realism—a candid portrait of a woman's every day life on a pioneer field. Though she wrote of grim experiences, figuratively speaking Isobel did not use sombre grey paper for her correspondence. Hers were cheerful letters with an atmosphere of contentment about them.
"Isobel is a happy writer," commented her father. "The talent she has for making an interesting letter from a small incident is really one of the gifts from the hand of God."
Actually it was he, Mr. Miller, living in Vancouver, who gave Isobel's circular letters a good launching! With his usual enthusiasm, he saw to it that what his daughter wrote to him personally was freely passed around. Beginning with family friends, the circle widened. More and more hands stretched out until even as early as 1931 he found himself issuing five hundred letters at a time. "Of course," he admitted, "a great number are local,
Vancouver and district, and yet we mail many to Toronto and to other parts of the country, as well as to China."
Soon Isobel's pen work was welcomed by strangers as well as by old friends. As one of them said, "Isobel's Prayer Trust letters were always a spiritual tonic." This was the general reaction.
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| PEN OF A READY WRITER
The mailing list kept adding weight. Then when a few years of economic depression came along Mr. Miller was overwhelmed. But what could be done? In Lisuland the Kuhns felt their increasing need for the prayer help the letters brought them.
Blessing abounded in their work, but problems too scattered themselves into the rich harvest like noxious weeds. Obviously, however, busy people like John and Isobel themselves could not undertake the labour and expense of despatching hundreds of letters across oceans and continents. Even surface mail, hopelessly slow, was costly, while air rates for a quantity were unthinkable.
And another angle of the matter prodded them just then. As Isobel described that time of perplexity, "Few of those who received our circulars ever acknowledged them so we could not be sure they prayed."
So what happened?
They decided to write only to a few fricnds they actually knew were praying. At the same time they asked three things definitely of the Lord. Isobel enumerated them:
"1. That He would use the letters to stir up more prayer for us and the nationals.
"2. That, if more people should have a copy, to find a way somehow to multiply it.
"3. That, if it be His will, He would lay it on some heart to help with the expenses of stamps, etc. Only once in seven years ha anyone ever sent money marked 'for circular-letter exnse." ,
P The response came and she exulted over it. "When we received Mrs. Kready's letter telling of a group of praying people who had taken us on, we were quite thrilled. And even more so when she told us that a Miss Zimmerman was multiplying the letters for us. (What a lot of tedious hours of kindness are folded up in that simple statement! God bless her for it and all who assisted.) Then a mail brought us a gift of ten dollars marked
'From the Lancaster Prayer Group.' The same mail brought a second gift from a second group lately raised up to pray, whom we have never met. Their gift was definitely marked 'for circular letter.' And three other prayer groups have arisen, whom we have never seen. In all, God has given us (of new ones), you in Lancaster, one group in Muskegon, Ill., one group in Keokuk,
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Iowa, one group in Beaver, Pa., and one in Birmingham, England. We've never been given 'groups' before. Isn't God good! All three prayers answered! Truly, often we have not simply because we did not ask. "Lord increase our faith!' "
For the first few years of their life together John and Isobel collaboratéd in writing the circular letters for John also wrote well. They signed together. Eventually, hegsten Isobel took over almost entirely.
It happened this way. Isobel knew how to tell a story to the best advantage. And when her imagination embellished it with a few flourishes, John frowned a bit, John being a stickler for accuracy.
One day Isobel was telling a story at the dining-table; "And it was pouring rain," she said.
John stopped her.
"I don't remember that it was 'pouring rain,' Belle. As I remember, it was merely raining.'
"Well," she retorted, indignant at having her perfectly good story slowed down, "I didn't stop to count the raindrops."
After that when inaccuracies crept into her stories he teased her about not having stopped to count the raindrops. This fell on a resentful spot in Isobel's heart.
For some time, letter-writing day with its small arguments, became to her what she called "an exasperating trial." To count raindrops or not to count raindrops, that was the question,
"Js this word for word what each person said?" John would ask, blue pencil poised.
"My dear husband," the story-teller groaned, "I don't know shorthand. I didn't take it down verbatim. But you know yourself that was, in general, how the conversation went."
"All right," responded John, '
'say so. Say that this is your interpretation of the conversation.'
"But that is perfectly ridiculous," Isobel protested. "Every reader knows that a conversation can't be remembered word for word."
Yet finally, the One who ties up the raindrops with a bow in the clouds untied the couple's tensions with a spirit of patience, forgiveness and mutual recognition of each other's gifts.
No more stormy letter-writing days!
'PEN OF A READY WRITER
Years afterwards Isobel drew from this incident some significant conclusions. "I feel many modern marriages are wrecked on just such sharp shoals as this," she said. "A human weakness is pointed out. The correction is resented. Argument grows bitter.
Young people, with the novels and shows that teach false ideals of marriage, are not prepared to bear and forbear. They are not ready to forgive, not willing to endure. Divorce is too quickly seized upon as the way out. It is the worst way out! To pray
God to awaken the other person, to be patient until He does so— this is God's way out. And it moulds the two opposite natures into one invincible whole."
And that is just what the Lord did for John and Isobel Kuhn.
"I have thanked God for this experience," Isobel confessed, "thanked Him many times. God was preparing to use my pen in relating stories of His work in human hearts. I couldn't afford to let x8 pen grow carcless as to facts. The blue pencil showed me that a Christian writer can't be too particular that every point be according to reality."
Eventually, John's attitude changed too. He gave her entire freedom as to what she wrote and how she wrote it. "I only helped her check certain dates and doctrines," he explained.
As they applied the love of Christ as an adhesive, the uneven edges of their temperaments were bonded into a closer union that held. It not only survived the stresses and strains. It surmounted them.
Doubtless they were temperamentally different. Perhaps they had little normal home life. But in the great essential they were absolutely one. With onc heart and one mind they were united in one vision only, "Looking unto Jesus."
Some have even thought Isobel wrote the intimate "Vistas" of their testings only for the eyes of her own children. But Isobel denied this. She explained that she hoped some young couples might be helped by the spiritual secrets she and John had discovered in their married life. Certainly without God's help, most marriages never would have endured the shattcring experiences she and John shared. Their twenty years on the ChinaBurma border with its extremely rough and unsettled living conditions, grave hazards and stretched-out separations, were desperately hard on both husband and wife!
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Isobel's writing entertained her on many a day that otherwise might have been dismal and lonely. Her pen was like a companion. She once said, "If 1 have something to say, writing is just fun; it is housework that makes the ass long-faced and weary!"
Besides, her pen was her messenger boy—always ready to run her errands. By it she kept in touch with her always-trekking husband, guarded her children and held on to her friends.
Understandably the circle of these friends kept expanding. At one time 1,700 were receiving her monthly Prayer Trust letters.
One of them typically expressed what a crowd of others have said:
"I am just one among scores, perhaps hundreds, whose lives have been touched and influenced through Isobel's correspondence. I have never had the privilege of sitting down to a personal visit with her, and yet in my heart, she is one of my intimate friends. As she wrote about her humble Lisu, many a time the problems and temptations which they faced have found an echo in my own heart, and in praying for them, I was strengthened and helped in my own life.
"Perhaps because she herself was so humble, she was able to enter into their lives with such sympathy and understanding.
Then, with her gifted pen and vivid imagination she was able to portray them to us. In consequence, thesé people of another tongue and nation, whom we don't expect ever to see on this earth, are as real to us as our neighbours down the block.
"At our house, we pray daily by name for Lisu. We have heard no news of them for the. past five years and perhaps may never hear again. But Isobel made them our friends and we can't forget them."
So truly the testimony of this Vancouver friend summarized Isobel's work!
As God's liaison officer she linked the pray-ers and the prayedfor. Of course they were wide poles apart geographically and socially. Yet Christian kinship is a marvellous reality. pee they. experienced it. As they separately approached the one Mediator between God and man, they found themselves bound to Him and to each other.
The letters that summoned such effectual prayer help were themselves planted in prayer. For some years, in fact until
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PEN OF A READY WRITER
ected advent made it impossible, Isobel spent one morning a month in fasting and prayer. She especially asked for her own spiritual needs and those of the churches, as well as for world revival. And it was on those days, too, that she usually gathered most of her seed thoughts for her Prayer Trust letters. It took vision and self-discipline to find time and a quiet place for such exacting work. Sometimes she resorted to a favourite spot near, a great pine-tree, an inspiring monarch of the forest. But the inspiration for her writing, as all will agree, came from a Source far higher than those trectops.
Certainly the hard-worked pen in Isobel Kuhn's hand was filled with something more than common ink.
Of course Isobel's love for reading greatly contributed to her success as an author. She spent little or no time with magazines.
For a time she read no fiction. But later she came back to it.
That was when she was sitting alone at meals in the Lisuland shanty. Then she liked to read classical fiction. Far from her own land, she found diversion in meeting her fellow-countrymen on the pages of a book propped up before her. Most systematically, however, Isobel gave her mind to devotionally stimulating books.
She frequently mentioned such writers as Ruth Paxson, Oswald Chambers and Amy Carmichael of the Dohnavur Fellowship.
About the latter, Isobel wrote to a friend, 'Miss Carmichael could write about anything or anybody and be a blessing, her words are always so full of the Lord. . .
. I read everything by her that I can get my hands on."
And this was obvious. Amy Carmichael's thoughts and poems and style appear often in Isobel's correspondence and see
In fact someone referred to her as "The C.ILM. Amy Carmichael." Similar comments being rumoured in Isobel's hearing brought out a facetious retort. She wrote to an intimate fellowworker, "This poor earth misses dear Amy Carmichael so much that they seize her laid-down halo and try to fit it on the first
Irish Eo Fa spyIt doesn't fit!"