Missionary Sufferings
Crippled Daughter
Resource
What is Grief?
Resource
Topic : Grief
A Daughters Grief
Edith Rockefeller McCormick, the daughter of John D. Rockefeller, maintained a large household staff. She applied one rule to every servant without exception: they were not permitted to speak to her. The rule was broken only once, when word arrived at the family’s country retreat that their young son had died of scarlet fever. The McCormicks were hosting a dinner party, but following a discussion in the servants’ quarters it was decided that Mrs. McCormick needed to know right away. When the tragic news was whispered to her, she merely nodded her head and the party continued without interruption.
Missionary Sufferings
In 1858 Scottish missionary John G. Paton and his wife sailed for the New Hebrides (now called Vanuatu) Three months after arriving on the island of Tanna, his wife died. One week later his infant son also died.
Paton was plunged into sorrow. Feeling terribly alone, and surrounded by savage people who showed him no sympathy, he wrote, “Let those who have ever passed through any similar darkness as of midnight feel for me. As for all other, it would be more than vain to try to paint my sorrows.…But for Jesus, and [His} fellowship, I [would] have gone mad and died.”
Crippled Daughter
A miserable looking woman recognized F. B. Meyer on the train and ventured to share her burden with him. For years she had cared for a crippled daughter who brought great joy to her life. She made tea for her each morning, then left for work, knowing that in the evening the daughter would be there when she arrived home. But the daughter had died, and the grieving mother was alone and miserable. Home was not “home” anymore.
Meyer gave her wise counsel. “When you get home and put the key in the door,” he said, “say aloud, ‘Jesus, I know You are here!’ and be ready to greet Him directly when you open the door. And as you light the fire tell Him what has happened during the day; if anybody has been kind, tell Him; if anybody has been unkind, tell Him, just as you would have told your daughter. At night stretch out your hand in the darkness and say, ‘Jesus, I know You are here!’”
Some months later, Meyer was back in that neighborhood and met the woman again, but he did not recognize her. Her face radiated joy instead of announcing misery. “I did as you told me,” she said, “and it has made all the difference in my life, and now I feel I know Him.”
Resource
- Leadership, Vol. 1, p. 54
What is Grief?
Author Edgar Jackson poignantly describes grief:
- Grief is a young widow trying to raise her three children, alone.
- Grief is the man so filled with shocked uncertainty and confusion that he strikes out at the nearest person.
- Grief is a mother walking daily to a nearby cemetery to stand quietly and alone a few minutes before going about the tasks of the day. She knows that part of her is in the cemetery, just as part of her is in her daily work.
- Grief is the silent, knife-like terror and sadness that comes a hundred times a day, when you start to speak to someone who is no longer there.
- Grief is the emptiness that comes when you eat alone after eating with another for many years.
- Grief is teaching yourself to go to bed without saying good night to the one who had died.
- Grief is the helpless wishing that things were different when you know they are not and never will be again.
- Grief is a whole cluster of adjustments, apprehensions, and uncertainties that strike life in is forward progress and make it difficult to redirect the energies of life.
Resource
- Growing Strong, Swindoll, p. 171
