After a week in Costa Rica I am back to sending out the weekly thought! And being in that foreign context led me to choose sending out this encouraging account regarding a missionary who struggled for many years in a foreign context before seeing any fruit whatsoever. I trust that you (especially if you are active in sharing the faith) will be encouraged by it. It comes to you from "The One Year Book of Christian History" by Michael and Sharon Rusten. Enjoy.
"Pioneer missionary Adoniram Judson graduated from Brown University as valedictorian at the age of nineteen, and in 1810 graduated in the first class of Andover Theological Seminary. After much prayer, he and his wife (Ann Hasseltine) sailed from the docks in Salem, Massachusetts, to the predominantly Buddhist country of Burma (now Myanmar), arriving in 1813. Shortly thereafter he was joined by two other missionaries. However, after six years of labor not one Burmese had trusted in Christ.
Then
on June 6, 1819, Judson received a letter from Moung Nau, a Burmese man who had
shown great interest in the gospel but up to this point had not acted on
it. The letter read: "I Moung Nau, the constant
recipient of your excellent favor, approach your feet. Whereas my Lord's three
(ie: Judon and the other two missionaries) come to the country of Burma -- not
for the purposes of trade, but to preach the religion of Jesus Christ, the Son
of the eternal God -- I, having heard and understood, am, with a joyful mind,
filled with love. I believe that the divine Son, Jesus Christ, suffered death
in the place of men, to atone for their sins. Like a heavy-laden man, I feel my
sins are very many. The punishment of my sins I deserve to suffer. Since it is
so, do you, sirs, consider that I, taking refuge in the merits of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and receiving baptism, in order to become his disciple, shall
dwell as one with yourselves, a band of brothers, in the happiness of heaven,
and therefore grant me the ordinance of baptism. It is through the grace of
Jesus Christ that you, sirs, have come by ship from one country and continent
to another and that we have met together. I pray the Lord's three that a
suitable day may be appointed, and that I may receive the ordinance of baptism.
Moreover, as it is only since I have met with you, sirs, that I have known
about the eternal God, I venture to pray that you will still unfold to me the
religion of God, that my old disposition may be destroyed, and my new
disposition improved."
Three
weeks later Moung Nau was baptized, and the barrier of unbelief was broken.
What enabled Adoniram Judson to faithfully labor so many years before seeing
any fruit from his labors? We can see evidence of his motivation in the
following lines, which he penciled on the inner cover of a book he used in his
translation of the Bible into Burmese:
"In joy or in pain,
Our course be onward still;
We sow on Burma's barren plain;
We reap on Zion's hill."
After
thirty-seven years as a missionary in Burma, Judson could look back not only on
good times, but also on extremely difficult times. He was imprisoned for 20
months between 1824-1826. The sufferings and brutalities of those 20 long months
in prison -- half-starved, iron-fettered, and sometimes trussed and suspended
by his mangled feet with only head and shoulders touching the ground -- are
described in detail by his wife, who passed away shortly afterward from illness
in 1826. From the time he landed Judson struggled against persecution,
disease, and the sadness and discouragement caused by the
death. He not only lost his wife Ann to death, but two of the children he
had with her -- 7 month old son Roger, and 2 year old daughter Maria, not to
mention one that was still-born. After eight years alone, he married his second
wife Sarah Hall Boardman and lost three of the children he had with her -- only
to lose her to sickness as well.
Yet
at the end of Judson's labors, he could look with satisfaction on a complete
Burmese translation of the Scriptures; a Burmese-English dictionary;
sixty-three churches among the Burmese and Karens; and best of all, seven
thousand Burmese Christians. Today there are more than
two million believers in Myanmar, and 40 percent of the Karen people to whom
Judson directed his ministry are now Christians."
Judson's belief was that nothing enduring comes without sacrifice. Ann was of the same mindset, and her story of faithfulness and perseverance is also well worth reading. It is hard for many to imagine what makes a people give up and sacrifice so much. Jim Elliot (who lost his life reaching out to the Auca Indian Tribe in the jungles of Ecuador probably summed it up best when he wrote in his diary (addressing those who asked why one would give up so much to go reach a small group of people): "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."
What
would you be willing to lose for the sake of Christ, His church, and those who
have never heard?
If
you would like to read more about the amazing life of Adoniram Judson, the book
"To the Golden Shore - The Life of Adoniram Judson" is
superb, and there is a free ebook "Adoniram Judson Biography"
Download eBook as a PDF file. Download eBook as an EPUB file formatted for readers
like the Nook, Sony Reader, and Apple iBooks (iPad, iPhone,
iPod) Download eBook as a MOBI file formatted for Kindle applications (this option
works well on some mobile devices, and not so well on others).
Prayer
note:
Between 2001 and 2004
up to 200,000 Karen people were driven from their homes due to war, with
160,000 more refugees, mostly Karen, living in refugee camps over the border of
Thailand. The largest camp was the one in Mae La, Tak province, Thailand,
where about 50,000 Karen refugees are hosted. As recently as February
2010, the Burmese army continued to burn Karen villages, displacing thousands
of people. A 2005 New York Times article on a
report by Guy Horton into depredations by the Myanmar Army against the Karen
and other groups in eastern Myanmar stated: "Using victims'
statements, photographs, maps and film... he purports to have documented slave
labor, systematic rape, the conscription of child soldiers, massacres and the
deliberate destruction of villages, food sources and medical
services." Many of the refugees form that attempted genocide were
brought to the United States and settled in Nebraska, central New York,
Pennsylvania and California. Pray for their adjustments, faith, and the
painful memories of atrocities like those mentioned above.
In
His Service, Pastor Jeff
