John Paton: The Man Who Dug for Water

John Paton grew up in a poor family in Scotland, in a tiny cottage where his father prayed aloud so often and so warmly that the children half believed heaven was just on the other side of the wall. When John was a grown man he heard about the people of the New Hebrides — far-off islands in the South Seas where no one had ever told the people about Jesus, and where strangers were sometimes killed. John decided to go. When an old man warned him that he would be eaten by cannibals, John answered that once he was dead it made little difference whether he was eaten by cannibals or by worms — what mattered was doing what God had asked.

In 1858 John and his young wife Mary sailed to the island of Tanna and built a little house on the shore. But almost at once, great sorrow fell upon them. Mary and their baby son both grew sick and died, only weeks after they had arrived. John dug their graves with his own hands and buried them there on that lonely island. He said afterwards that if he had not been sure that Jesus was near him, he thought the grief would have driven him mad.

He did not run away. John stayed on Tanna alone among people who often threatened to kill him. Many nights he lay awake listening for the sound of men creeping to his door, and again and again God kept him safe. At last, when the danger grew too fierce, he escaped to another island — but he was not finished.

On the little island of Aniwa, John tried something the islanders thought was madness: he began to dig a deep hole in the ground, looking for fresh water. The people had only ever known water that fell as rain from the sky, and they laughed at the strange missionary digging downward instead of looking up. Then, far below, John struck cool, clear water bubbling up out of the earth. The islanders were astonished — water from the ground, like rain from below! If the missionary had been right about the hidden water, they began to say, perhaps he was right about the hidden God as well.

Little by little the people of Aniwa turned from their old fears to follow Jesus. John Paton gave them the Bible in their own words and lived among them for many years — the man who had buried his own family on a faraway shore and stayed anyway. He had learned that God is worth trusting even in the deepest grief, and that one brave heart, planted in a hard place, can turn a whole island toward heaven.