Fur Gloves and a Winding Road

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and he will direct your paths.” — from Proverbs 3

Amy wanted to go to China first. But the doctors of the China Inland Mission said she was not healthy enough. The door was shut. Amy was very disappointed, but she did not believe God had changed his mind. Then the Keswick Convention decided to send her as its very first missionary. In March 1893 she sailed for Japan. She was twenty-five.

In Japan she joined a missionary called Barclay Buxton and a team of Japanese and English Christians in the town of Matsue. Amy could not speak Japanese, so a young Japanese Christian woman, whom Amy called Misaki San, helped by putting her words into Japanese.

Amy told later about a visit to an old woman who was ill. Amy was wearing her English clothes, with fur-lined gloves against the cold. As she talked about Jesus, she saw the old woman looking at her gloves instead of listening. Amy went home and decided that from then on she would wear Japanese clothes. She did not think clothes could save anyone. But she knew they could get in the way.

After about fifteen months Amy became very ill, and she left Japan. She went to Ceylon, which is now called Sri Lanka. Then news came that the Dear Old Man had had a stroke, so she hurried home to England to look after him. To some people it looked as if Amy’s missionary days were over.

But in 1895 a mission for women, the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, agreed to send her to India. In October 1895 she sailed again. She did not know it yet, but she would never see her home country again.

Amy’s path went this way and that, and it did not always make sense. But God was leading her one step at a time. You do not need to see the whole road. You can trust God for the next step.

Dear God, when I do not understand what is happening, help me to trust you with all my heart. Please show me the next step. Amen.