Light At The River

A Prison Bundle

The last couple months have been rough on our local Churches and the members. We’ve had many cancellations due to weather. Some days were too cold, some were too snowy, and other days, all which needed done simply couldn’t be achieved such as cleaning parking lots, steps and ramps. Yet we must press on.

Many things in life will get us down such as the weather or storms which come not from the sky but from our own mind. Winter time is prime time for depression. Lack of daylight and less freedom of movement caused by slick roads and the cold play hard on us who are used to going and doing.

With Churches closed and a lack of fellowship it’s easy to feel defeated but remember its all part of the race. Spring will be here in a month or two and the winter will be past. Will we be ready then to march on? Now is the time of preparation. Don’t feel down or trapped. We still have our Cross to bear.

Consider the scripture below and the story of this man whose ministry was halted by horrible circumstances but through it all God had a plan for him. He has a plan for you also. The storms will pass and ministry will continue. God Bless………..Lynn

On This Day                                                                                        February 5, 1812

Matthew 10:38 And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. 39 He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.

Adoniram Judson, who wanted to become America’s first foreign missionary, fell in love with the most beautiful girl in Bradford, Massachusetts. Ann Hasseltine was the daughter of a Congregational deacon, and Judson’s letter asking for her hand is among the most emboldened in church history:

I have now to ask whether you can consent to part with your daughter, whether you can consent to her departure to a heathen land, and her subjection to the hardships and suffering of a missionary life? Whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean, to the fatal influence of the southern climate of India, to every kind of want and distress, to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death.

John Hasseltine did consent, and the couple was married in the Hasseltine home on February 5, 1812. The next day they were commissioned as missionaries and soon left American shores. Their new home, Rangoon, Burma, was a filthy, crowded city. The atmosphere was oppressive, the work discouraging. By 1820, there were ten Burmese converts, but at a cost. One Judson child had been stillborn; another died of tropical fever.

When war broke out between Burma and England, Adoniram was accused of being a spy and placed in a death prison. His dark, dank cell was filled with vermin, and Adoniram was shackled at the ankles. Every evening he was hanged upside down with only his head and shoulders resting on the ground.

Ann, pregnant again, visited one government official after another, urging her husband’s release. On February 15, 1825, eight months after Adoniram’s arrest, she showed up at his prison carrying a small bundle, their newborn daughter Maria. No artist can capture the poignancy of that brief union with its intense emotions of sorrow and joy, fear and faith.

Torturous months followed. Adoniram was finally released, but both Ann and Maria soon died of fever. Adoniram suffered a mental breakdown that nearly took both his ministry and his life.

But God wasn’t finished with him. America’s first foreign missionary still had a world to change.