Today's promise: God is always ready to
help us and expects us to help others
Judging by appearances
"The trouble with
you is that you make your decisions on the basis of appearance. You must
recognize that we belong to Christ."
Job 14:5 NLT
Little Woman, Long Shadow
Two weeks before
Christmas, on December 12, 1840, a baby girl was born into an
aristocratic plantation family in Albemarle County, Virginia. Her name was
Charlotte Diggs Moon, but everyone called her "Lottie." She grew to
just four feet three inches, yet her intellect and force of personality were
enormous. Lottie spoke six languages and earned a master's degree in education
in 1861.
Lottie came from a family of dedicated Southern Baptists, but she became a staunch skeptic. Yet, it would be her intellect and skepticism that would bring her to faith one sleepless night in December 1858 as she pondered a message by Dr. John Broadus.
At age thirty-three, Lottie heard a call to missions "as clear as a bell." In July 1873 the foreign mission board of the Southern Baptist Convention appointed her its first unmarried missionary to China. She tirelessly advocated for the needs of the people of China. In 1888 she persuaded SBC women to take an annual missions offering on Christmas Eve. By 1912, despite such gifts, thousands of people were dying every day in famine-ravaged Shantung Province.
At seventy-two, Lottie Moon was coming home. But that same night, aboard a ship off Japan, she died — of complications from starvation. A few months before she had written, "If I had a thousand lives, I would give them all for the women of China." The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering continues to this day. The 2010 goal is $175 million.
Adapted from The One Year® Book of Christian History by E. Michael and Sharon Rusten (Tyndale) pp 694-95
Lottie came from a family of dedicated Southern Baptists, but she became a staunch skeptic. Yet, it would be her intellect and skepticism that would bring her to faith one sleepless night in December 1858 as she pondered a message by Dr. John Broadus.
At age thirty-three, Lottie heard a call to missions "as clear as a bell." In July 1873 the foreign mission board of the Southern Baptist Convention appointed her its first unmarried missionary to China. She tirelessly advocated for the needs of the people of China. In 1888 she persuaded SBC women to take an annual missions offering on Christmas Eve. By 1912, despite such gifts, thousands of people were dying every day in famine-ravaged Shantung Province.
At seventy-two, Lottie Moon was coming home. But that same night, aboard a ship off Japan, she died — of complications from starvation. A few months before she had written, "If I had a thousand lives, I would give them all for the women of China." The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering continues to this day. The 2010 goal is $175 million.
Adapted from The One Year® Book of Christian History by E. Michael and Sharon Rusten (Tyndale) pp 694-95
Content is derived
from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation and other publications of Tyndale
Publishing House
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