Laid on His Altar

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.” — Romans 12:1 (ASV)

In 1891 Mary's friends got a surprise: she was engaged. Charles Morrison was a teacher at the mission in Duke Town, a reader and writer, “a man of fine feeling, with a distinct literary gift.” He was twenty-four. She was about forty-two. He had been kind to her when she was ill, and she had few people to talk to about books.

She set one condition from the start. She would not leave Okoyong. He would have to come and work there with her. To a friend she wrote:

“I lay it all in God's hands, and will take from Him whatever He sees best for His work in Okoyong. My life was laid on His altar for that people long ago, and I would not take one jot or tittle of it back.”

The Board said no: his work at Duke Town was too important. Mary said only, “What the Lord ordains is right.” Her biographer adds that she “apparently” put it out of her mind, and that one word is the only hint of what it cost. Morrison's health broke down, he had to leave Calabar, and he later died in America. You may hear that she never married because she was “married to Africa.” The truth is plainer. She wanted to marry. The Church wouldn't send him to Okoyong, she wouldn't leave, and his health failed.

The years that followed were the hardest. In 1896 the people of Okoyong moved inland, and Mary followed to a place called Akpap, living in a two-roomed shed with no floor. A new baby brought an infectious disease into her house, and four of her children died. Then smallpox swept the region. She vaccinated people for hours a day, and turned her old house at Ekenge into a hospital. The sick poured in and everyone else ran.

Edem, the chief who had taken her in eight years before, caught it. She nursed him day and night, and he died in the middle of the night. She was alone. With her own hands she made a coffin, dug a grave and buried him. Then she walked through the dark, wet forest to Akpap and fell onto her bed as dawn broke.

She wrote: “I am just thinking that perhaps the reason God has taken my four bairns is that I may be free to go up and help them.” That's hard to read, and you don't have to agree with it. It was her way of refusing to believe the deaths meant nothing. For a while, her biographer says, she had “no heart for anything.” Today we'd call it grief, and maybe depression. “All is dark,” she wrote in those years, “except above. Calvary stands safe and sure.”

Then for three years she worked alone, often ill and unable to sleep. When she wrote up her first seven years in Okoyong, she had to report no baptisms at all. “Christ sent me to preach the Gospel,” she said, “and He will look after results.”

Paul says to offer your whole self to God as a “living sacrifice.” Mary did, and it cost her a marriage, four children and a friend she buried herself. She didn't think God had cheated her. But she never pretended it was easy, and you don't have to either.

If you've felt “no heart for anything” for weeks, that's not a spiritual failure. Tell a safe person: a parent, pastor, teacher, doctor, or a crisis line where you live. Mary kept going partly because others were praying and writing to her. You need people too.

One thing to do this week: think of one thing you're holding back from God, a plan, a relationship, a dream. Write it down and pray, honestly, “I lay it in your hands.” If you've been low for a long time, tell one trusted person this week.