Hallelujah

“I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.” — from 2 Timothy 4

For twelve years Charlie and Priscilla lived far apart, he in the Congo and she in England. They wrote to each other all the time, and they loved each other to the end. In 1928 Priscilla made the long, hard journey to Ibambi. She could stay only a short time, and it was the last time they saw each other. In January 1929 Priscilla died in Spain. Charlie had lost his dearest partner.

Charlie was old now, and often ill and in pain. He could be stern and hard to work with, and the grown-ups at the mission sometimes disagreed with him. He was not a perfect man. But he never stopped loving Jesus or the people of the Congo.

In his last year he wrote a goodbye letter to his grandchildren. In it he put two lines that he loved. He had not written them himself, but they said what he believed: “Only one life, ’twill soon be past, Only what’s done for Christ will last.”

In July 1931 Charlie became very ill, and there was no hospital near enough to help. He died at Ibambi on 16 July 1931, at the age of seventy. His family and friends remembered that his last word was “Hallelujah,” which means “Praise the Lord.”

A very large crowd of Congolese Christians came to his funeral, many from far away. He was buried at Ibambi, among the people he had come to serve. The mission he started still sends workers all over the world, and today it is called WEC International. And the church in the forest has grown and grown. It is led by Congolese Christians, and its members are counted in the hundreds of thousands.

Charlie gave his whole life to Jesus. You have only one life too. Whatever you do for Jesus, even small things, will last for ever.

Dear God, thank you for Charlie Studd and for the Congolese Christians who carried your good news through the forest. Help me to live my one life for you. Amen.