One timeless skill I possess is writing. Literary styles change, technology races on, even spelling and word usage slowly shifts, but the basic art of stringing words together in an effective, pleasing manner will likely never go the way of horse and buggy.
For the next six weeks, I will be teaching creative writing to a group of teens at Bethel Christian Academy where my grandkids attend and I can think of no more delightful way to spend an afternoon. Putting together lesson plans and assignments and setting up competitions with prizes has cost a lot of time and effort, but I believe its well worth the expenditure. I know some students will groan at the prospect and many don't like to write. But, there will be a few who use what I offer to improve their skill in a craft that never dies, and that is gratifying to the bone.
Footprints in History, continued Hunger was everywhere as famine swept Northern China. Rather than face starvation one young woman chose to throw herself from a bridge to a dry river bed. But the desperate act only deepened her tragedy because the fall wounded but was not enough to kill. Broken and bleeding, she lay three days in the blazing sun until Lottie heard of the situation and ordered her own litter to fetch the delirious, dying soul.
Tenderly placing the filthy patient within the blankets and padding of her own kang (elevated bed) the veteran missionary worked day and night wiping matted mucus from half-dead eyes, cleansing grimy wounds, and spooning drops of broth down a closing throat Anna, helped where she could and wondered about giving and devotion.
Was such extreme service "wasted alabaster" or the essence of how Jesus lived? Surely, Lottie's talent, skills, training and compassion were far too great to be focused totally on this one hopeless woman who understood little or nothing of what the mission said.
Lottie had been born to affluent parents and grew to womanhood on fifteen-hundred acres of Virginia plantation. One of the first women in the South to be given a Master degree, she could speak Latin, Greek, French, Italian, Spanish and was fluent in reading Hebrew, long before becoming so skilled in Chinese that she spoke and read like a native.
But her early years had been more characterized by practical jokes and intellectual skepticism than compassion. She preferred a good time or biting witticism to stale church services or dull scripture readings. It was only at the urging of her sister that she attended a revival where the reality of the gospel slowly dawned in her heart.
Once Lottie understood-really understood-the claims of Christ, everything changed. Church was no longer stale, the Bible no longer dull and the compassion that awakened in her heart grew larger day by day. She was constantly drawn to helping the poor and working for justice among the oppressed.
Although far more educated and skilled then most men of her time, Lottie followed a traditional career path and spent her young adult years teaching school in Kentucky and Georgia where everyone expected her to marry and spend the rest of her life following a socially acceptable path.
But in 1872 her unmarried sister, Edmonia, broke with tradition and volunteered for the mission field. This radical decision was even more shocking than when another sister, Orianna, had become the first woman doctor to serve in the Confederate Army. No doubt both of these non-traditional decisions strengthened Lottie's resolve go anywhere the Lord might call.
At thirty-three, Lottie believed she had heard that call and presented all her talent and education (and a large amount of her money) to the Southern Baptist Mission Board volunteering to follow her sister to China.
But traditions are not easily discarded and even though she was filled with compassion and dedicated to the task, Lottie confined her ministry to teaching the children of other missionaries because evangelism was considered, "men's work." Like most missionaries of her time, Lottie thought the Chinese an inferior people. She insisted on wearing American clothes, observing American customs and maintaining a degree of distance from the "heathen."
It was only gradually that she came to realize the wideness in God's mercy and the more she shed her westernized trappings and identified with the Chinese people, the more their simple curiosity about foreigners turned into genuine interest in the Gospel. She began wearing Chinese clothes, adopted Chinese customs, learned to be sensitive to Chinese culture and in return gained the love and respect of many Chinese people.
At forty-five Lottie took another radical step. She gave up teaching American missionary children and instead moved into the interior to evangelize full time however because Chinese culture-as well as her own-thought it improper for women to teach men, she limited her evangelism to females. But her work was so successful and the lure of the gospel so strong that often the men stopped work to hang around the edges of a crowd or listened at the windows of a home so that they, too, might know more about this strange God brought to them by a woman who seemed to genuinely care for the Chinese people. Eventually, Lottie's converts numbered hundreds and then thousands.
By the end of her career, she was no longer an aloof emissary who arrived to give heathen glad tidings. She no longer divided people into "us" and "them." The Chinese people were her people. She not only traveled hundreds of miles each year in evangelistic work, she took on their struggles one by one as they appeared at her door. The schools she founded for girls were centers of academic excellence. To the beggars, she not only doled out pittances to those who asked, she took them into her home and offered them hope.
Lottie suffered with her adopted people through the first Sino-Japanese war, the Boxer Rebellion and the Chinese nationalist uprising. Through bounty and famine she walked where they walked and loved them as her own.
By the time Anna watched her minister to the young suicide victim, Lottie was bent and aged, poverty stricken and weak but still she gave all she had pouring her life into one. It was in a letter home that Anna posed the question of "wasted alabaster."
The answer to that question can still be debated. But regardless of how an academic answer might be framed, there can be no doubt that such poured out grace is a beautiful reflection of the love of our Lord and a noble example for others.
But the need of being number one was also her gateway to depression. Inside, she knew her inadequacies. Constantly trapped between her need for success and fear of being exposed as a failure, she knew moments of darkness that bordered on despair. It was these dark times that, even as a child, finally forced her to look outward and upward.
One Reader's Journey, continued Looking back, I am amazed at how blind I was. God was all around and constantly showing Himself to me but I couldn't see it. I remember one time in particular. It was one of the worst thunderstorms in history-or at least it seemed that way to me. Rain poured from the sky like a waterfall. Normally this would have been welcome in our dry part of the country but I was a single mom on the way to the emergency room with a child who had a raging fever. I was only a few blocks from home when the storm broke and I could barely see to drive. My knuckles were white on the steering wheel and I had to fight just to get down Central Expressway.
That was when the windshield wipers quit.
I couldn't believe it. I was totally blind and the car was still moving in traffic at fifty miles an hour! I was desperate as I flipped dials and gadgets trying to coax the wipers back into life. "God, help!" I begged. "You know I have to get this baby to the doctor! Please! Make the windshield wipers start again!"
With a jerk and grind the thump-thump of perfectly working wipers sprang to life.
I know now that this was totally the hand of God, but I didn't know it then. In fact, I don't remember so much as giving the situation another thought. I didn't breathe a "thank you" to the heavens or anything. I just knew I needed to get my child to the emergency room and once the wipers started I was back in control of the situation. When the desperate fear was gone, I just turned my attention to the next task and kept rolling.
Now, I've been a Christian for many years and I wonder how I could have been so blind? It wasn't only the wipers but many other things. Just looking at a sunset or hearing my baby giggle should have told me that God was all around but I could not see or understand. I would be almost middle age before the light would dawn.
I wouldn't want anyone to wait as long as I did to be born again, but in some ways it has advantages. I can remember what life was like without God. And, more than that, I can see--really see--how different the world looks now that I know Him.
