Heroes

I’m finally regaining the time to read again before bed.  I love biographies, and lately I’ve been going back and reading the life stories of several famous Christian heroes I haven’t read about since I was a child.  Fredrick Douglass the abolitionist and Dwight L. Moody the evangelist (sort of the Billy Graham of the 1800’s).  Amy Carmichael, the Irish girl who went to India and created a home for abandoned babies who had been “given back” to the river god by being left on the banks to die.  Mary Slessor, who lived with several African tribes, founding medical clinics and schools, and rescued hundreds of twin babies left to die in the jungle (the locals believed twins were the spawn of evil spirits).  William Carey, the “father” of modern missions, who translated the Bible into 9 different languages and dialects so that common people could read it in their local languages, and helped to ban the Hindu practice of sati, or burning widows alive on their husbands’ funeral pyres (some girls as young as 11). 

 

Our culture glorifies all sorts of people who do nothing better than sing or look glamorous on a movie screen.  It’s important to have role models worth admiring for making a difference.  Of course, there’s a world of difference between reading about such people as a child, and as an adult.  Before they were just regular people who did amazing things when they chose to follow God’s call on their life.  As I read about them now, I can see much more clearly their quirks and faults, mistakes they made, and how different they all were.  I smile to think that if you put a couple of them in the same room, they’d drive each other nuts because they were so different.  One outgoing and gregarious to the point of being obnoxious, another reserved and dignified to the extreme.  Yet no matter their personalities, strengths or weaknesses, God was able to use them to change the world.  You don’t have to be something you’re not to make a difference.  God loves you and wants to use you, just the way you are.  That’s a great lesson for kids and adults, alike.  J