Pressed, Not Crushed

“we are pressed on every side, yet not straitened; perplexed, yet not unto despair; pursued, yet not forsaken; smitten down, yet not destroyed” — 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 (ASV)

In 1854 Crowther went up the Niger again on a small steamer called the Pleiad, this time pushing far up its great eastern branch, the Benue. He talked with kings using everyday pictures. To a prince at Aboh, at noon with the sun blazing, he asked whether anyone would light lamps in broad daylight to help the sun shine. The sacrifices people offered to their gods, he said, were like that; Christ’s sacrifice, made once, was enough. On the hundred-and-first day he wrote that no one had died. They came home with every one of the twelve Europeans and fifty-four Africans alive. In 1841, forty-two had died. “Not unto us, but unto God, we give praise.”

In 1857 he went back to plant a permanent mission, staffed entirely by Africans. At Onitsha he left a young clergyman born to Igbo parents, John Taylor, and the interpreter Simon Jonas, with instructions that still sound wise: make friends, teach more by conversation than by sermons, learn the language, and “be not disappointed if you find the people do not act up to their engagement.”

Then, on 7 October 1857, near Jebba far up the Niger, the steamer Dayspring hit rocks and keeled over. Everyone got ashore. The ship was lost. A message went overland to the coast asking for another steamer. It took a year to come.

Fifty people camped on the riverbank. Crowther held morning and evening prayers in a tent made of mats and opened it to the sick. When a leopard raided the camp, he admitted cheerfully, “I am no gunner.” And he didn’t waste the year. He began to write down the Nupe language with a Muslim teacher and a young soldier in the Nupe army, who “felt very much interested in seeing their language being reduced to writing.” He studied Nupe farming, trade and markets. When a Fulani chief let one of his men rob a Nupe woman in front of him, Crowther told him “God would plead the cause of the oppressed” and took her to safety in the mission boat.

He lived for months as almost the only Christian in his village, among Muslims. One night he sat up late with two Muslim companions arguing about whether Christ really died on the cross. He was clear: if Christ hadn’t died, “then we are found false witnesses.” But his method was gentle. “A Mohammedan can never be brought round by his religion being quarrelled with, and abusively charged with falsehood,” he wrote, “but by kind treatment he may be led to read and study the Christian’s Bible.” When people asked him for charms, he showed them his bare arms and neck: he wore none, because “there is no help to be had from them.”

Read Paul’s list again: pressed, perplexed, pursued, smitten down. Then the “yet not” after each one. Crowther’s ship was wrecked and his plans ruined. By the end of it there was a mission at Onitsha, another upriver, the start of a Nupe grammar, and a small group of Africans who had shown they could plant churches on the Niger themselves.

When your plans get wrecked, the question isn’t whether you’re stuck on the riverbank. You are. The question is what you do with the year.

One thing to do this week: think of one plan of yours that has stalled or fallen apart. Instead of just waiting for it to be fixed, choose one useful thing you can do right where you’re stuck: learn something, help someone, build a friendship. Do it this week.