The old woman uses a cane to support her four foot eleven inch frame. She has a string tied around her neck to support the cardboard plate she holds out for change. She never looks up; her black, hunched-over, tiny silouette is unmistakable from a distance. She never looks up. Until today.
"Hola Consolacion, we have food for you."
The old woman lifted her eyes to those of the younger woman addressing her. She hadn't heard someone call her by name in so long. The majority of people treat her like they treat every other begger... like she isn't there. The most beautiful smile I have ever seen spread across her sun-weathered, wrinkly face. Ripples like brown waves formed on her forehead, around her mouth, and seemed to stop abruptly at her hairline around her eyes- eyes that were wide with surprise and joy. Her smile showed every tooth she had, although half were missing, and you could see her tongue prodding around her mouth to form words. She reached up her tiny arm, forgetting for a second about the tray of coins she was holding, and grabbed the young woman's head in an attempt to kiss her face.
The two women talked and in the distance people sneered.
"Look at them," Consolacion said, pointing her finger into the crowd. "They stare at us as if we're doing something wrong... ASSHOLES!"
The young woman tried to hold back the laughter. She still isn't used to old women with Mother-Teresa-esque features shouting profanities. A lot of times the only thing she can do is laugh. The only other option is to cry.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Perspective
The following excerpt was taken from www.wholesomewords.org. It is the biography of David Livingstone, and I was going to edit some of the longer parts out but I can't find anything that unimportant- I put some parts in bold that I thought were pertinant to the end of this post. It's long but it's good.
David Livingstone
by Robert E. Speer
In Westminster Abbey the visitor, wandering about studying the monuments and inscriptions, comes in the middle of the nave upon a large black slab set in the floor bearing these words:
BROUGHT BY FAITHFUL HANDS
OVER LAND AND SEA HERE RESTS
DAVID LIVINGSTONE,
MISSIONARY,TRAVELLER,PHILANTHROPIST,
Born March 19, 1813,
At Blantyre, Lanarkshire.
Died May 1, 1873,
At Chitambo's Village, Ulala.
On the right border of the stone is a Latin sentence and along the left border:
"OTHER SHEEP I HAVE WHICH ARE NOT OF THIS FOLD:
THEM ALSO I MUST BRING, AND THEY SHALL HEAR MY VOICE."
This is the resting-place of the body, but not of the heart, of the Scotch weaver lad who went out from his simple home an unknown lad and died as one of the greatest and most honored of men.
From his earliest childhood he was of a calm, self-reliant nature. We are told by his best biographer that "it was his father's habit to lock the door at dusk, by which time all the children were to be in the house. One evening David had infringed this rule, and when he reached the door it was barred. He made no cry nor disturbance, but, having procured a piece of bread, sat down contentedly to pass the night on the doorstep. There, on looking out, his mother found him... At the age of nine he got a New Testament from his Sunday-school teacher for repeating the 119th Psalm on two successive evenings with only five errors, a proof that perseverance was bred in the bone."
At the age of ten he went to work in the cotton factory as a piecer, and after some years was promoted to be a spinner. The first half-crown he earned he gave to his mother. With part of his first week's wages he bought a Latin textbook and studied that language with ardor in an evening class between eight and ten. He had to be in the factory at six in the morning and his work ended at eight at night. But by working at Latin until midnight he mastered Virgil and Horace by the time he was sixteen. He used to read in the factory by putting the book on the spinning-jenny so that he could catch a sentence at a time as he passed at his work. He was fond of botany and geology and zoology, and when he could get out would scour the country for specimens. On one expedition he and his brother caught a big salmon, and, to conceal the fish, which they had no right to take, they put it in his brother's trousers leg and so got it home.
When he was about twelve he began to have serious thoughts about deeper things, but not till he was twenty did the great change come which brought into his life the strength of the consciousness of his duty to God. Feeling "that the salvation of men ought to be the chief desire and aim of every Christian," he made a resolution "that he would give to the cause of missions all that he might earn beyond what was required for his subsistence." But at twenty-one he read an appeal by Mr. Gutzlaff on behalf of China, and from that time he sought himself to enter the foreign mission field, influenced by "the claim of so many millions of his fellow creatures and the want of qualified missionaries." So he went out from his home to follow the advice of old David Hogg, one of the patriarchs of the village: "Now, lad, make religion the every-day business of your life, and not a thing of fits and starts; for if you do, temptation and other things will get the better of you."
China was the land to which Livingstone wished to go, but the opium war prevented his doing so at once. About the same time he came into contact with Dr. Robert Moffat, who was then in England creating much interest in his South African mission. He told Livingstone of "a vast plain to the north where he had sometimes seen, in the morning sun, the smoke of a thousand villages, where no missionary had ever been," and it was not long before the young Scotch student decided for Africa. Livingstone was thorough in his preparation, as he was in all things. He determined to get a medical as well as a theological education. To do it he had to borrow books, to earn his own way, and to live with the closest economy, paying about fifty-cents a week for the rent of his room. The first time he tried to preach he entirely forgot his sermon, and saying, "Friends, I have forgotten all I had to say," he hurried out of the pulpit and left the chapel. One of his acquaintances of those days wrote, years after, that even then his two strongest characteristics were simplicity and resolution. "Now after forty years," he adds, "I remember his step, the characteristic forward tread, firm, simple, resolute, neither fast nor slow, no hurry and no dawdle, but which evidently meant -- getting there."
On December 8, 1840, he sailed for Africa, going out by way of Brazil and the Cape of Good Hope. The captain of the ship taught him the use of the quadrant and how to take observations. He was to find good use for this knowledge. Arriving at the Cape, he went on to his first station, Kuruman, but he had no thought of staying there or of working in any fixed groove. He was thinking of new plans, and, above all, his eyes were turned northward toward the great region absolutely untouched and unknown. The first period of his work might be roughly marked as from 1840 to 1852. From Kuruman he made several trips deeper into the country, and had some of those experiences with lions of which he was to have so many.
On one trip he broke a finger, and when it was healing broke it again by the recoil of a revolver which he shot at a lion which made him a sudden visit in the middle of the night. Some of his trips were in ox-wagons and some on ox-back. "It is rough traveling, as you can conceive," he wrote. "The skin is so loose there is no getting one's greatcoat, which has to serve both as saddle and blanket, to stick on; and then the long horns in front, with which he can give one a punch in the abdomen if he likes, make us sit as bolt upright as dragoons. In this manner I traveled more than four hundred miles." His investigations were undertaken on his own responsibility. He wrote home to ask the directors of the London Missionary Society to approve, but if they did not, he said, he was at their disposal "to go anywhere, provided it be forward."
He soon left Kuruman to locate at Mabotsa, and it was there that a lion nearly killed him, tearing his flesh and crushing the bone in his shoulder. A native diverted the attention of the lion when his paw was on Livingstone's head. When asked once what he thought when the lion was over him, Livingstone answered: "I was thinking what part of me he would eat first." When years later his body was brought home to England it was by the false joint in the crushed arm that it was identified. To avoid friction at Mabotsa, Livingstone, who had just built a house and laid out a garden, but who would quarrel with no one, gave up the station and went on with the daughter of Robert and Mary Moffat, the great missionaries of South Africa, whom he had just married, and established a new station at Chonuane. But there was no water there, so he moved again to Kolobeng, on the river of that name, and the whole tribe among whom he lived moved with him.
Kolobeng was unhealthful, and far beyond it stretched the vast unknown interior. Something in Livingstone's heart told him to go on. So on he went. On August 1, 1849, he discovered Lake 'Ngami, a body of water so big that he could not see the opposite shore. And, later, he found the River Zambezi. The lake was 870 miles from Kuruman across a desert. He must find a passage to the sea on either the west or the east coast. "Providence seems to call me to the regions beyond," he wrote, and he heard ever more loudly the call of God to strike at the awful slave traffic. But what should he do with his wife and children? The only course was to send them home to Scotland. So, hard as it was, he took them to Cape Town in March, 1852, the whole party appearing out of the interior in clothes of curious and outworn fashions, having been eleven years away from civilization, and in April he parted from his family and turned back into the darkness.
Before he reached Kolobeng the Boers had attacked and destroyed that station. With all ties to any one place now broken, he started north, and in June, 1853, reached Linyanti, fifteen hundred miles north from the Cape. It was a hard and dangerous journey, part of it made with fever, through swamps and thickets and water three or four feet deep. "With our hands all raw and bloody and knees through our trousers, we at length emerged. But, as he wrote in his journals on the way, "if God has accepted my service, then my life is charmed till my work is done ... I will place no value on anything I have or may possess, except in relation to the kingdom of Christ. If anything will advance the interests of that kingdom, it shall be given away or kept only as by giving or keeping of it I shall most promote the glory of him to whom I owe all my hopes in time and eternity. May grace and strength sufficient to enable me to adhere faithfully to this resolution be imparted to me, so that in truth, not in name only, all my interests and those of my children may be identified with his cause ... I will try and remember always to approach God in secret with as much reverence in speech, posture, and behavior as in public. Help me, thou who knowest my frame and pitiest as a father his children." Evidences of the curse of the slave-trade multiplied constantly, and he saw more clearly at Linyanti that both for the suppression of that traffic and for the expansion of the missionary work it was necessary to open up the continent.
Accordingly, on November 11, 1853, he started westward for the Atlantic Ocean, and on May 31, 1854, came out at Loanda, about two hundred miles south of the mouth of the Congo. He had thirty-one attacks of fever on the way. He must find and make his own road. The floods and rains kept him almost constantly wet. Savages opposed him. He had no white companions. He arrived ragged and worn and exhausted, to find no letters from home waiting for him. An ordinary man would have felt that he had done enough and would have started for home, but not Livingstone. He plunged back into Africa and went eastward across the continent. He left Loanda, September 24, 1854, and reached Quilimane, on the opposite side of Africa, on May 20, 1856. On the way he became nearly deaf from fever and nearly blind from being struck in the eye by a branch of a tree in the forest. On this trip he discovered the great Victoria Falls, higher and fuller than Niagara, and he had yet more exciting times with savage tribes, whom, as always, he found a way to placate. From Quilimane he sailed for England, arriving August, 1856. At Cairo he learned of the death of his old father, who had longed to see him once again.
He got a tremendous welcome home. The Scotch weaver lad who had been all alone in Africa found himself the great hero of the day in Scotland and England. He was received by the men of science, by the Queen and the royal family, by all friends of humanity. He was given the freedom of the cities of London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, and honors of the Universities of Glasgow, and Oxford, and Cambridge. Unspoiled by all the flattery, he left England to return to Africa on March 10, 1858, going out now to Quilimane as British consul for the east coast and interior of Africa. As he sailed, he wrote back to his son, Tom:
"London, 2nd February, 1858. -- My Dear Tom: I am soon going off from this country, and wilt leave you to the care of him who neither slumbers nor sleeps, and never disappointed any one who put his trust in him. If you make him your friend, he will be better to you than any companion can be. He is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. May he grant you grace to seek him and to serve him. I have nothing better to say to you than to take God for your Father, Jesus for your Savior, and the Holy Spirit for your sanctifier. Do this and you are safe forever. No evil can then befall you. Hope you will learn quickly and well, so as to be fitted for God's service in the world."
"Pearl, in the Mersey, 10th March, 1858. -- My Dear Tom: We are off again, and we trust that he who rules the waves will watch over us and remain with you, to bless us and make us blessings to our fellow men. The Lord be with you, and be very gracious to you! Avoid and hate sin, and cleave to Jesus as your Savior from guilt."
It was six years before Livingstone returned again to England. During this time he explored the Zambezi and the Shire rivers, making his way about among the people, whatever the difficulties, always with success, because he knew how to win and keep their confidence and love by being himself ever truthful, ever fearless. Mrs. Livingstone returned with him to Africa on this trip, and died on April 27, 1862, at Shupanga, where she was buried, and her husband went on alone to Lake Nyasa, making unwearied explorations, surmounting the obstacles of nature and bad men, and learning ever more and more about the iniquity of the trade in slaves.
In 1864 he went to India and thence to England for the last time. While there he learned of the death of his son Robert, who fought on the Northern side in the American Civil War and lies buried at Gettysburg, and his mother also died while he was on his way. He got home in time to fulfil her wish that one of her laddies should lay her head in her grave. He had another crowded year, which included the writing of a book, as his previous visit had done, and then with the last public words in Scotland, "Fear God and work hard," he returned to Africa to open up the unknown eastern interior. This time his connection was with the Royal Geographical Society. For the first six years he explored eastern equatorial Africa, discovering new lakes, rivers, and mountains, exposing the slave-trade, suffering, struggling, but never yielding. One Christmas he writes "Took my belt up three holes to relieve hunger." He had no white companion, and in 1866 the report reached Zanzibar that he had been killed.
This story was found to be false, but still no white man had seen Livingstone for a long time. He was not seeking to be seen, however. In the dark of the interior, all alone, hungry and weary, he was pressing on to open new country and to insure the future freedom of poor and oppressed peoples. In 1871 he was reduced to the last straits, all the goods sent to him at Ujiji having been sold by the rascal Shereef to whom they had been consigned; but just then Henry M. Stanley, who had been sent by the New York Herald to find him, came to him after a long search, bringing him ample stores. What impression he made on Stanley, Stanley himself has told us:
"I defy any one to be in his society long without thoroughly fathoming him, for in him there is no guile, and what is apparent on the surface is the thing that is in him. ... Dr. Livingstone is about sixty years old, though after he was restored to health he looked like a man who had not passed his fiftieth year. ... You may take any point in Dr. Livingstone's character and analyze it carefully, and I would challenge any man to find a fault in it. ... His is the Spartan heroism, the inflexibility of the Roman, the enduring resolution of the Anglo-Saxon -- never to relinquish his work, though his heart yearns for home; never to surrender his obligations until he can write finis to his work."
Refreshed by Stanley's visit and the supplies he brought, Livingstone turned inland again, hunting for the source of the Nile and fighting the slave trade. The iron frame had been taxed almost to its limit, however, and ever fresh difficulties had to be overcome. His last birthday, March 19, 1873, found him very weak.
"The 29th of April was the last day of his travels. In the morning he directed Susi to take down the side of the hut that the kitanda might be brought to him, as the door would not admit it, and he was quite unable to walk to it. Then came the crossing of a river; then progress through swamps and plashes; and when they got to anything like a dry plain he would ever and anon beg of them to lay him down. At last they got him to Chitambo's village, in Ilala, where they had to put him under the eaves of a house during a drizzling rain, until the hut they were building should be got ready.
"Then they laid him on a rough bed in the hut, where he spent the night. Next day he lay undisturbed. He asked a few wandering questions about the country -- especially about Luapula. His people knew that the end could not be far off. Nothing occurred to attract notice during the early part of the night, but at four in the morning the boy who lay at his door called in alarm for Susi, fearing that their master was dead. By the candle still burning they saw him, not in bed, but kneeling at the bedside with his head buried in his hands upon the pillow. The sad yet not unexpected truth soon became evident: he had passed away on the farthest of all his journeys, and without a single attendant. But he had died in the act of prayer -- prayer offered in that reverential attitude about which he was always so particular; commending his own spirit, with all his dear ones, as was his wont, into the hands of his Savior; and commending Africa -- his own dear Africa -- with all her woes and sins and wrongs, to the Avenger of the oppressed and the Redeemer of the lost."
His faithful African companions prepared his body for transportation to the coast, burying his heart and other organs at the foot of a mvula tree in Ilala, which is now marked with a rough inscription. The body they carried to Zanzibar. Thence it was taken to England and buried in the Abbey under the great slab which bears his name...
(Copied by Stephen Ross for WholesomeWords.org from Servants of the King [by] Robert E. Speer. New York: Eaton & Mains, 1909.)
After having read this I came upon this quote from David Livingstone himself, which I will end the post with.
"I never made a sacrifice. We ought not to talk of 'sacrifice' when we remember the great sacrifice which He made who left His Father's throne on high to give Himself up for us."
Kind of puts things in perspective, doesn't it?
David Livingstone
by Robert E. Speer
In Westminster Abbey the visitor, wandering about studying the monuments and inscriptions, comes in the middle of the nave upon a large black slab set in the floor bearing these words:
BROUGHT BY FAITHFUL HANDS
OVER LAND AND SEA HERE RESTS
DAVID LIVINGSTONE,
MISSIONARY,TRAVELLER,PHILANTHROPIST,
Born March 19, 1813,
At Blantyre, Lanarkshire.
Died May 1, 1873,
At Chitambo's Village, Ulala.
On the right border of the stone is a Latin sentence and along the left border:
"OTHER SHEEP I HAVE WHICH ARE NOT OF THIS FOLD:
THEM ALSO I MUST BRING, AND THEY SHALL HEAR MY VOICE."
This is the resting-place of the body, but not of the heart, of the Scotch weaver lad who went out from his simple home an unknown lad and died as one of the greatest and most honored of men.
From his earliest childhood he was of a calm, self-reliant nature. We are told by his best biographer that "it was his father's habit to lock the door at dusk, by which time all the children were to be in the house. One evening David had infringed this rule, and when he reached the door it was barred. He made no cry nor disturbance, but, having procured a piece of bread, sat down contentedly to pass the night on the doorstep. There, on looking out, his mother found him... At the age of nine he got a New Testament from his Sunday-school teacher for repeating the 119th Psalm on two successive evenings with only five errors, a proof that perseverance was bred in the bone."
At the age of ten he went to work in the cotton factory as a piecer, and after some years was promoted to be a spinner. The first half-crown he earned he gave to his mother. With part of his first week's wages he bought a Latin textbook and studied that language with ardor in an evening class between eight and ten. He had to be in the factory at six in the morning and his work ended at eight at night. But by working at Latin until midnight he mastered Virgil and Horace by the time he was sixteen. He used to read in the factory by putting the book on the spinning-jenny so that he could catch a sentence at a time as he passed at his work. He was fond of botany and geology and zoology, and when he could get out would scour the country for specimens. On one expedition he and his brother caught a big salmon, and, to conceal the fish, which they had no right to take, they put it in his brother's trousers leg and so got it home.
When he was about twelve he began to have serious thoughts about deeper things, but not till he was twenty did the great change come which brought into his life the strength of the consciousness of his duty to God. Feeling "that the salvation of men ought to be the chief desire and aim of every Christian," he made a resolution "that he would give to the cause of missions all that he might earn beyond what was required for his subsistence." But at twenty-one he read an appeal by Mr. Gutzlaff on behalf of China, and from that time he sought himself to enter the foreign mission field, influenced by "the claim of so many millions of his fellow creatures and the want of qualified missionaries." So he went out from his home to follow the advice of old David Hogg, one of the patriarchs of the village: "Now, lad, make religion the every-day business of your life, and not a thing of fits and starts; for if you do, temptation and other things will get the better of you."
China was the land to which Livingstone wished to go, but the opium war prevented his doing so at once. About the same time he came into contact with Dr. Robert Moffat, who was then in England creating much interest in his South African mission. He told Livingstone of "a vast plain to the north where he had sometimes seen, in the morning sun, the smoke of a thousand villages, where no missionary had ever been," and it was not long before the young Scotch student decided for Africa. Livingstone was thorough in his preparation, as he was in all things. He determined to get a medical as well as a theological education. To do it he had to borrow books, to earn his own way, and to live with the closest economy, paying about fifty-cents a week for the rent of his room. The first time he tried to preach he entirely forgot his sermon, and saying, "Friends, I have forgotten all I had to say," he hurried out of the pulpit and left the chapel. One of his acquaintances of those days wrote, years after, that even then his two strongest characteristics were simplicity and resolution. "Now after forty years," he adds, "I remember his step, the characteristic forward tread, firm, simple, resolute, neither fast nor slow, no hurry and no dawdle, but which evidently meant -- getting there."
On December 8, 1840, he sailed for Africa, going out by way of Brazil and the Cape of Good Hope. The captain of the ship taught him the use of the quadrant and how to take observations. He was to find good use for this knowledge. Arriving at the Cape, he went on to his first station, Kuruman, but he had no thought of staying there or of working in any fixed groove. He was thinking of new plans, and, above all, his eyes were turned northward toward the great region absolutely untouched and unknown. The first period of his work might be roughly marked as from 1840 to 1852. From Kuruman he made several trips deeper into the country, and had some of those experiences with lions of which he was to have so many.
On one trip he broke a finger, and when it was healing broke it again by the recoil of a revolver which he shot at a lion which made him a sudden visit in the middle of the night. Some of his trips were in ox-wagons and some on ox-back. "It is rough traveling, as you can conceive," he wrote. "The skin is so loose there is no getting one's greatcoat, which has to serve both as saddle and blanket, to stick on; and then the long horns in front, with which he can give one a punch in the abdomen if he likes, make us sit as bolt upright as dragoons. In this manner I traveled more than four hundred miles." His investigations were undertaken on his own responsibility. He wrote home to ask the directors of the London Missionary Society to approve, but if they did not, he said, he was at their disposal "to go anywhere, provided it be forward."
He soon left Kuruman to locate at Mabotsa, and it was there that a lion nearly killed him, tearing his flesh and crushing the bone in his shoulder. A native diverted the attention of the lion when his paw was on Livingstone's head. When asked once what he thought when the lion was over him, Livingstone answered: "I was thinking what part of me he would eat first." When years later his body was brought home to England it was by the false joint in the crushed arm that it was identified. To avoid friction at Mabotsa, Livingstone, who had just built a house and laid out a garden, but who would quarrel with no one, gave up the station and went on with the daughter of Robert and Mary Moffat, the great missionaries of South Africa, whom he had just married, and established a new station at Chonuane. But there was no water there, so he moved again to Kolobeng, on the river of that name, and the whole tribe among whom he lived moved with him.
Kolobeng was unhealthful, and far beyond it stretched the vast unknown interior. Something in Livingstone's heart told him to go on. So on he went. On August 1, 1849, he discovered Lake 'Ngami, a body of water so big that he could not see the opposite shore. And, later, he found the River Zambezi. The lake was 870 miles from Kuruman across a desert. He must find a passage to the sea on either the west or the east coast. "Providence seems to call me to the regions beyond," he wrote, and he heard ever more loudly the call of God to strike at the awful slave traffic. But what should he do with his wife and children? The only course was to send them home to Scotland. So, hard as it was, he took them to Cape Town in March, 1852, the whole party appearing out of the interior in clothes of curious and outworn fashions, having been eleven years away from civilization, and in April he parted from his family and turned back into the darkness.
Before he reached Kolobeng the Boers had attacked and destroyed that station. With all ties to any one place now broken, he started north, and in June, 1853, reached Linyanti, fifteen hundred miles north from the Cape. It was a hard and dangerous journey, part of it made with fever, through swamps and thickets and water three or four feet deep. "With our hands all raw and bloody and knees through our trousers, we at length emerged. But, as he wrote in his journals on the way, "if God has accepted my service, then my life is charmed till my work is done ... I will place no value on anything I have or may possess, except in relation to the kingdom of Christ. If anything will advance the interests of that kingdom, it shall be given away or kept only as by giving or keeping of it I shall most promote the glory of him to whom I owe all my hopes in time and eternity. May grace and strength sufficient to enable me to adhere faithfully to this resolution be imparted to me, so that in truth, not in name only, all my interests and those of my children may be identified with his cause ... I will try and remember always to approach God in secret with as much reverence in speech, posture, and behavior as in public. Help me, thou who knowest my frame and pitiest as a father his children." Evidences of the curse of the slave-trade multiplied constantly, and he saw more clearly at Linyanti that both for the suppression of that traffic and for the expansion of the missionary work it was necessary to open up the continent.
Accordingly, on November 11, 1853, he started westward for the Atlantic Ocean, and on May 31, 1854, came out at Loanda, about two hundred miles south of the mouth of the Congo. He had thirty-one attacks of fever on the way. He must find and make his own road. The floods and rains kept him almost constantly wet. Savages opposed him. He had no white companions. He arrived ragged and worn and exhausted, to find no letters from home waiting for him. An ordinary man would have felt that he had done enough and would have started for home, but not Livingstone. He plunged back into Africa and went eastward across the continent. He left Loanda, September 24, 1854, and reached Quilimane, on the opposite side of Africa, on May 20, 1856. On the way he became nearly deaf from fever and nearly blind from being struck in the eye by a branch of a tree in the forest. On this trip he discovered the great Victoria Falls, higher and fuller than Niagara, and he had yet more exciting times with savage tribes, whom, as always, he found a way to placate. From Quilimane he sailed for England, arriving August, 1856. At Cairo he learned of the death of his old father, who had longed to see him once again.
He got a tremendous welcome home. The Scotch weaver lad who had been all alone in Africa found himself the great hero of the day in Scotland and England. He was received by the men of science, by the Queen and the royal family, by all friends of humanity. He was given the freedom of the cities of London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, and honors of the Universities of Glasgow, and Oxford, and Cambridge. Unspoiled by all the flattery, he left England to return to Africa on March 10, 1858, going out now to Quilimane as British consul for the east coast and interior of Africa. As he sailed, he wrote back to his son, Tom:
"London, 2nd February, 1858. -- My Dear Tom: I am soon going off from this country, and wilt leave you to the care of him who neither slumbers nor sleeps, and never disappointed any one who put his trust in him. If you make him your friend, he will be better to you than any companion can be. He is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. May he grant you grace to seek him and to serve him. I have nothing better to say to you than to take God for your Father, Jesus for your Savior, and the Holy Spirit for your sanctifier. Do this and you are safe forever. No evil can then befall you. Hope you will learn quickly and well, so as to be fitted for God's service in the world."
"Pearl, in the Mersey, 10th March, 1858. -- My Dear Tom: We are off again, and we trust that he who rules the waves will watch over us and remain with you, to bless us and make us blessings to our fellow men. The Lord be with you, and be very gracious to you! Avoid and hate sin, and cleave to Jesus as your Savior from guilt."
It was six years before Livingstone returned again to England. During this time he explored the Zambezi and the Shire rivers, making his way about among the people, whatever the difficulties, always with success, because he knew how to win and keep their confidence and love by being himself ever truthful, ever fearless. Mrs. Livingstone returned with him to Africa on this trip, and died on April 27, 1862, at Shupanga, where she was buried, and her husband went on alone to Lake Nyasa, making unwearied explorations, surmounting the obstacles of nature and bad men, and learning ever more and more about the iniquity of the trade in slaves.
In 1864 he went to India and thence to England for the last time. While there he learned of the death of his son Robert, who fought on the Northern side in the American Civil War and lies buried at Gettysburg, and his mother also died while he was on his way. He got home in time to fulfil her wish that one of her laddies should lay her head in her grave. He had another crowded year, which included the writing of a book, as his previous visit had done, and then with the last public words in Scotland, "Fear God and work hard," he returned to Africa to open up the unknown eastern interior. This time his connection was with the Royal Geographical Society. For the first six years he explored eastern equatorial Africa, discovering new lakes, rivers, and mountains, exposing the slave-trade, suffering, struggling, but never yielding. One Christmas he writes "Took my belt up three holes to relieve hunger." He had no white companion, and in 1866 the report reached Zanzibar that he had been killed.
This story was found to be false, but still no white man had seen Livingstone for a long time. He was not seeking to be seen, however. In the dark of the interior, all alone, hungry and weary, he was pressing on to open new country and to insure the future freedom of poor and oppressed peoples. In 1871 he was reduced to the last straits, all the goods sent to him at Ujiji having been sold by the rascal Shereef to whom they had been consigned; but just then Henry M. Stanley, who had been sent by the New York Herald to find him, came to him after a long search, bringing him ample stores. What impression he made on Stanley, Stanley himself has told us:
"I defy any one to be in his society long without thoroughly fathoming him, for in him there is no guile, and what is apparent on the surface is the thing that is in him. ... Dr. Livingstone is about sixty years old, though after he was restored to health he looked like a man who had not passed his fiftieth year. ... You may take any point in Dr. Livingstone's character and analyze it carefully, and I would challenge any man to find a fault in it. ... His is the Spartan heroism, the inflexibility of the Roman, the enduring resolution of the Anglo-Saxon -- never to relinquish his work, though his heart yearns for home; never to surrender his obligations until he can write finis to his work."
Refreshed by Stanley's visit and the supplies he brought, Livingstone turned inland again, hunting for the source of the Nile and fighting the slave trade. The iron frame had been taxed almost to its limit, however, and ever fresh difficulties had to be overcome. His last birthday, March 19, 1873, found him very weak.
"The 29th of April was the last day of his travels. In the morning he directed Susi to take down the side of the hut that the kitanda might be brought to him, as the door would not admit it, and he was quite unable to walk to it. Then came the crossing of a river; then progress through swamps and plashes; and when they got to anything like a dry plain he would ever and anon beg of them to lay him down. At last they got him to Chitambo's village, in Ilala, where they had to put him under the eaves of a house during a drizzling rain, until the hut they were building should be got ready.
"Then they laid him on a rough bed in the hut, where he spent the night. Next day he lay undisturbed. He asked a few wandering questions about the country -- especially about Luapula. His people knew that the end could not be far off. Nothing occurred to attract notice during the early part of the night, but at four in the morning the boy who lay at his door called in alarm for Susi, fearing that their master was dead. By the candle still burning they saw him, not in bed, but kneeling at the bedside with his head buried in his hands upon the pillow. The sad yet not unexpected truth soon became evident: he had passed away on the farthest of all his journeys, and without a single attendant. But he had died in the act of prayer -- prayer offered in that reverential attitude about which he was always so particular; commending his own spirit, with all his dear ones, as was his wont, into the hands of his Savior; and commending Africa -- his own dear Africa -- with all her woes and sins and wrongs, to the Avenger of the oppressed and the Redeemer of the lost."
His faithful African companions prepared his body for transportation to the coast, burying his heart and other organs at the foot of a mvula tree in Ilala, which is now marked with a rough inscription. The body they carried to Zanzibar. Thence it was taken to England and buried in the Abbey under the great slab which bears his name...
(Copied by Stephen Ross for WholesomeWords.org from Servants of the King [by] Robert E. Speer. New York: Eaton & Mains, 1909.)
After having read this I came upon this quote from David Livingstone himself, which I will end the post with.
"I never made a sacrifice. We ought not to talk of 'sacrifice' when we remember the great sacrifice which He made who left His Father's throne on high to give Himself up for us."
Kind of puts things in perspective, doesn't it?
Monday, August 28, 2006
Doubt
I think all Christians doubt. If you are a Christian and you don't doubt, I'd like to meet you and pick your brain. Despite all the evidence I've seen in my life and in other's lives, I still sometimes have the gnawing thought at the back of my head that maybe I'm wrong and there isn't more to life than being born, procreating and dying.
I have been reading through Matthew and studying it in depth, verse by verse, for the last couple of months. I found something in chapter 11 that caught my attention:
(verse 2 and 3) "And when John (the baptist) heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and said to Him, 'Are you the Coming One, or do we look for another?'"
Keep in mind that by this time John the Baptist had already baptised Jesus and was there to hear the voice of the Father from heaven and the whole nine yards. My first reaction upon reading this was "doesn't he remember baptising Christ?" Then I thought maybe John just wanted confirmation. I think while he was sitting in jail, the thought began to creep up on him, maybe this isn't the right guy. I mean, afterall, Jesus wasn't exactly the Messiah that anyone was expecting. John must have been a little concerned.
What really encourages me was Christ's response to John's question.
"Jesus answered and said to them, 'Go and tell the things which you hear and see: The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not offended because of me."
Important things:
1. Jesus' response was go and tell the things which you HEAR and SEE. Jesus didn't talk about how it makes no sense that the earth is six billion years old; he didn't start a lecture about moral law; he didn't talk about democrats or gun laws. He said look at what's going on right now and then go tell John, and that will be enough for him.
2. Jesus did not say "John, you faithless jerk! I'm going to go get rebaptized by someone who isn't a shmuck." I think Jesus understood that he was taking people by surprise in not overthrowing Jerusalem and "burning up the chaff with inquenchable fire." Jesus gave enough evidence though to compensate for the Jews' false pretenses. (which brings me to #3)
3. The last sentence there says "And blessed is he who is not offended because of me." At first, I didn't get it. Then I pulled out my handy Greek-English Interlinear Bible and Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (coolest things ever) and looked up the original Greek for the word offended. The NIV says 'blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.' I think that's a little closer to the original. The word "offend" in the Greek is skandalizo, where we get our word scandal or scandalize. It means "to trip up or entice to sin, apostasy or displeasure." Jesus was saying basically, Blessed is the man who isn't tripped up because of something I didn't do (such as heal the sick, raise the dead, or preach to the poor.) He wanted to make it clear that he did everything he could do to get people to realize he was the Messiah. He did not hold back in regards to proof.
4. John learned of these things by word of mouth, just as we have learned of Jesus' miracles by word of mouth, or the written word.
Now what does that mean for us?
The Lord never meant for us to blindly follow something for which there was no proof. Jesus was very concerned with providing enough proof for his followers. However, most of us are in the position of John, having to rely on what we hear is going on in other parts of the world, or having to rely on what we've seen done in the past. Now, that said, Christ expects us to take existing proof and run with it. He didn't go to John and do some miracle to prove himself. He expected John's disciples to accurately report what was going on. In light of that, I don't think I have much room for doubt at all. For those who think they haven't seen enough, I would encourage you to talk to people who do seem firm in their faith and ask them why they are so certain. Christ is eager to provide what you need to believe in him; you just have to look for it.
I have been reading through Matthew and studying it in depth, verse by verse, for the last couple of months. I found something in chapter 11 that caught my attention:
(verse 2 and 3) "And when John (the baptist) heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and said to Him, 'Are you the Coming One, or do we look for another?'"
Keep in mind that by this time John the Baptist had already baptised Jesus and was there to hear the voice of the Father from heaven and the whole nine yards. My first reaction upon reading this was "doesn't he remember baptising Christ?" Then I thought maybe John just wanted confirmation. I think while he was sitting in jail, the thought began to creep up on him, maybe this isn't the right guy. I mean, afterall, Jesus wasn't exactly the Messiah that anyone was expecting. John must have been a little concerned.
What really encourages me was Christ's response to John's question.
"Jesus answered and said to them, 'Go and tell the things which you hear and see: The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not offended because of me."
Important things:
1. Jesus' response was go and tell the things which you HEAR and SEE. Jesus didn't talk about how it makes no sense that the earth is six billion years old; he didn't start a lecture about moral law; he didn't talk about democrats or gun laws. He said look at what's going on right now and then go tell John, and that will be enough for him.
2. Jesus did not say "John, you faithless jerk! I'm going to go get rebaptized by someone who isn't a shmuck." I think Jesus understood that he was taking people by surprise in not overthrowing Jerusalem and "burning up the chaff with inquenchable fire." Jesus gave enough evidence though to compensate for the Jews' false pretenses. (which brings me to #3)
3. The last sentence there says "And blessed is he who is not offended because of me." At first, I didn't get it. Then I pulled out my handy Greek-English Interlinear Bible and Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (coolest things ever) and looked up the original Greek for the word offended. The NIV says 'blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.' I think that's a little closer to the original. The word "offend" in the Greek is skandalizo, where we get our word scandal or scandalize. It means "to trip up or entice to sin, apostasy or displeasure." Jesus was saying basically, Blessed is the man who isn't tripped up because of something I didn't do (such as heal the sick, raise the dead, or preach to the poor.) He wanted to make it clear that he did everything he could do to get people to realize he was the Messiah. He did not hold back in regards to proof.
4. John learned of these things by word of mouth, just as we have learned of Jesus' miracles by word of mouth, or the written word.
Now what does that mean for us?
The Lord never meant for us to blindly follow something for which there was no proof. Jesus was very concerned with providing enough proof for his followers. However, most of us are in the position of John, having to rely on what we hear is going on in other parts of the world, or having to rely on what we've seen done in the past. Now, that said, Christ expects us to take existing proof and run with it. He didn't go to John and do some miracle to prove himself. He expected John's disciples to accurately report what was going on. In light of that, I don't think I have much room for doubt at all. For those who think they haven't seen enough, I would encourage you to talk to people who do seem firm in their faith and ask them why they are so certain. Christ is eager to provide what you need to believe in him; you just have to look for it.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
dcTalk: A Legend Lives On
Today was a bittersweet day. As many of you know, dcTalk has always been, and will remain, the best band on Earth. I am filled with mixed emotions as I write this because of both the happiness and bewilderment of what happened to me today.
Okay, I'll tell you.
As I was driving in the car, the instrumental beginning of the song "Jesus Freak" came on the radio, the song for which dcTalk will probably be most remembered for centuries, nay, millenia to come. I was naturally excited, as any dcTalk fan would be, as I opened my mouth to sing the first word "Separated..."
My immediate response to what I heard was horror. Michael Tait's voice did not echo from the speakers like a squirrel peeks his head out of his tree burrowed hole (both are so natural). Instead, I heard a woman's voice singing words that I have never heard a woman sing before (on the radio, I sing the words all the time, but that doesn't count. Imagine your mom's voice coming out of the face of the cookie monster going "cookie, cookie." It's just wrong.)
Someone has done a remake of the dcTalk song "Jesus Freak".
At first I was dissapointed and confused; terrible confusion and crying ensued. Then I realized... DcTalk is worthy of having a song THEY WROTE resung and remade into something new (although NOT better.) I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE WITH A DCTALK SHRINE IN MY SOUL! Ok, maybe that's going a little far, but if there exists something just a degree or two less than a shrine in my soul, that's what I have for dcTalk. But, this proves it! I'm not alone!!!
So for the many of you who don't think dcTalk is the greatest band ever, I would insist that you're incorrect. DcTalk has has a song stolen from them and rerecorded. Have you? Has your favorite band? Okay, maybe they have, but that just goes to show you, that dcTalk is just as good as them, if not better.
I come back to Spain in nine days. In memory of dcTalk, and sheer excitement about them and their aura, I shall quote lyrics now.
The other night I met a girl, and she looked at me so nice,
I asked her for the digits and she didn't think twice.
A couple'a days later, called her up and asked her out,
she said "with you?" I said "with me!" and she said "without a doubt."
I took her to the garden, where I guess they grow the olives,
she wore a tighter skirt than any I had seen at college.
She said "I love to smoke and drink while cursin' like a sailor."
I asked her where she got her mouth and if she had a tailor.
Finally, I walked her to the door to say goodnight,
She said "I am an apple, would you care to take a bite?"
Politely I refused and said "I'm lookin' for a lady,"
so she slapped me in my face and said "BOY YOU MUST BE CRAZY!"
Okay, I'll tell you.
As I was driving in the car, the instrumental beginning of the song "Jesus Freak" came on the radio, the song for which dcTalk will probably be most remembered for centuries, nay, millenia to come. I was naturally excited, as any dcTalk fan would be, as I opened my mouth to sing the first word "Separated..."
My immediate response to what I heard was horror. Michael Tait's voice did not echo from the speakers like a squirrel peeks his head out of his tree burrowed hole (both are so natural). Instead, I heard a woman's voice singing words that I have never heard a woman sing before (on the radio, I sing the words all the time, but that doesn't count. Imagine your mom's voice coming out of the face of the cookie monster going "cookie, cookie." It's just wrong.)
Someone has done a remake of the dcTalk song "Jesus Freak".
At first I was dissapointed and confused; terrible confusion and crying ensued. Then I realized... DcTalk is worthy of having a song THEY WROTE resung and remade into something new (although NOT better.) I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE WITH A DCTALK SHRINE IN MY SOUL! Ok, maybe that's going a little far, but if there exists something just a degree or two less than a shrine in my soul, that's what I have for dcTalk. But, this proves it! I'm not alone!!!
So for the many of you who don't think dcTalk is the greatest band ever, I would insist that you're incorrect. DcTalk has has a song stolen from them and rerecorded. Have you? Has your favorite band? Okay, maybe they have, but that just goes to show you, that dcTalk is just as good as them, if not better.
I come back to Spain in nine days. In memory of dcTalk, and sheer excitement about them and their aura, I shall quote lyrics now.
The other night I met a girl, and she looked at me so nice,
I asked her for the digits and she didn't think twice.
A couple'a days later, called her up and asked her out,
she said "with you?" I said "with me!" and she said "without a doubt."
I took her to the garden, where I guess they grow the olives,
she wore a tighter skirt than any I had seen at college.
She said "I love to smoke and drink while cursin' like a sailor."
I asked her where she got her mouth and if she had a tailor.
Finally, I walked her to the door to say goodnight,
She said "I am an apple, would you care to take a bite?"
Politely I refused and said "I'm lookin' for a lady,"
so she slapped me in my face and said "BOY YOU MUST BE CRAZY!"
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