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NINETEEN Day Nineteen | March 15 Strength
“Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up. It is always tired in the morning, noon and night. But the body is never tired if the mind is not tired.”
David Livingstone was one of the heroes of the 19th century. He was a brilliant scholar. He studied Greek, theology, went to Glasgow University, and graduated with a degree in medicine. He could have been anything he wanted to be: a professor, an author, a doctor. But God called him to the mission field and led him to serve in the interior of Africa. He went to places where no missionary had ever been seen and where the Gospel had not been preached before.
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The sacrifice he made was incredible. While out in the bush, on a preaching mission, one day, a huge lion leaped on him and clamped his teeth on his shoulder and crushed it, leaving his left arm totally useless. One of his helpers killed the lion and saved him. Through that ordeal, Livingstone was nursed back to health by a woman named, Mary, who became his wife. She went with him to Africa; and as the years passed, they had five children.
As he served, the sacrifices continued. He lost a child to illness. Loved ones died back in England. The most crushing blow was when his wife was struck down by an African fever. He buried her under a huge tree. After having a short memorial service, he went back to his cottage and wept like a baby. He had made unbelievable sacrifices and endured unbelievable burdens. But at the end of that horrible day, this is what he wrote in his diary:
“My Jesus, my King, my Life, my All; I again dedicate my whole self to Thee. I shall place no value on anything I possess or on anything I do except in relation to the Kingdom of Christ.”
After 16 years in Africa, Livingstone went to England for the first time. He had become an international celebrity, which really meant nothing to him at all. He was invited to speak at the University of Glasgow where he had graduated many years before.
Now, it was the custom of that day for undergraduates to heckle visiting speakers. So they were ready for this preacher with their toy trumpets, whistles, rattles, and all manner of noisemakers. They even had pea-shooters. When Livingstone was introduced, they were all ready to make fun of him, to laugh at him, and to disrupt his speech. That is, until they saw him.
Livingstone came to the platform with a tread of a man who had already walked 11,000 miles. That left arm hung uselessly at his side. His body was emaciated; his skin deeply tanned from 16 years in the African sun; his face wrinkled from the ravages of several fevers that had racked his body. He was half deaf from rheumatic fever and half blind from a branch that had slapped him in the eyes.
Before he could even begin to speak, the students did something unheard of. They put their noisemakers down and, silently, they all stood on their feet, out of respect for this man of God. Because they knew they were looking at the epitome of sacrifice. Throughout Livingstone’s entire speech, not one student sat down and not one student said a word.
The story of Dr. Livingstone was told to generations of school children. A story of faith and sacrifice. But most of all, a story of staying with it. A story that when God guides, God provides. Countless people have been inspired by this account. In our way, in our own time, can we find the endurance to run the races before us? So that, one day, we can meet Jesus face to face and a rm with the Apostle
