Week 44—Thursday Acts 5:17-21
Acts 5:17-21
“BUT I DECIDED TO STAY”
We continue to look at the motive for missions and evangelism. The last incident we gave yesterday might have given the impression that Christian missions is a grim-faced business. It isn’t. It’s joy—in spite of, if not on account of. Alongside this grave of Richards was the grave of Dr. Poor—he lived longer, joyously. He was stricken with cholera and said to Dr. Green, another missionary, who attended him, “I don’t think there is much hope for my recovery. I am a Poor patient and you a Green doctor.” Joked on his deathbed!
When Bishop Warne visited me in a Lucknow, India, hospital when I was struggling with tetanus, he leaned over to get my last words. They were: “Bishop, please don’t take away my work from me. I’ll be well and able to take care of it.” Hope when there was no hope!
Today I talked with a young woman missionary treasurer of the women’s society of The Methodist Church in India, and she told me that she was ordered home by a Hindu doctor, for she had filariasis, elephantiasis. She decided she would not go and would be well. Two years later when she presented herself to the same doctor, he was amazed and said, “But I sent you home.” And she quietly said, “But I decided to stay.” “Well, then I’ll do all I can to help you stay,” he thoughtfully replied. She is well and will take over the Lee Memorial Mission which is itself based on the heroism of the Lees who lost their six children when the whole family was buried in a landslide in Darjeeling. They decided that since their lesser home was broken up they would set up a bigger one. For over sixty years there have been about three hundred children, waifs gathered from the streets of Calcutta, in that home. Nothing, absolutely nothing could have given the motive and power to turn that tragedy into triumph, except the fact of what God had done in Christ.
O God, our Heavenly Father, what you have done holds us to what we should do. This is the only thing that suffices us. We can follow the God who shows us the way and doesn’t merely point the way. We are thankful. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: If I do not witness, I will soon have nothing to witness to.