Mounting Mountains
Soul Snack 9/26 ... Mounting Mountains
Regular readers and subscribers may know well Hudson Taylor is my hero. In 1870 he climbed some very tangible Everests.
With great faithfulness, the final day of each year Hudson would dedicate to prayer and fasting.
On Dec 31st 1870 he writes with some mammoth mountains behind him:
The present year has been in many ways remarkable. perhaps everyone of our number has been more or less face to face with danger, perpelexity and distress, but out of it all the Lord has delivered us. And some of us, who have drunk of the cup of the Man of Sorrows more deeply than ever before, can testify that it has been a most blessed year to our souls and can give God thanks for it... We have put to proof His faithfulness, His power to support in trouble and to give patience under affliction, as well as deliver from danger. And should greater dangers await us, should deeper sorrows come than any we have yet felt it is hoped that they will be met in a strenghened confidence in our God.*
This catalogue of confidence he wrote after the Tien-tsin murders of 21 foreigners including nuns. Into this, factor that in 1870 Hudson sent 3 children home to England. Two sons died, Samuel and Noel (a new born) and also his wife succumbed to cholera and died.
Later Hudson would write inspiringly again:
Would that God make hell so real to us that we cannot rest; heaven so real that we must have men there; Christ so real that our supreme motive ... shall be to make the Man of Sorrows the Man of joy...**
Surely Hudson first mounted the mountains that he would ensuingly throw into the sea.
Faith is my pedestal for today, and my floor for the future.
I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Mk 11:23
* p284 ... Spiritual Secrets of Hudson Taylor - Dr and Mrs Howard Taylor pub = Whitaker House 1996** p396 .. as above