I have never really cared much for David Livingstone. To me, he always seemed “puffed” up and not really a “missionary”. I mean – what kind of missionary wonders around a continent like a guy who lost his keys?!
Answer: a smart one (sorry – I had to try to crack a joke… )
However, this last week I read a quote from Livingstone that changed my mind about him. Maybe he was a missionary after all… =/ I don’t know. I do know that he was a man of God.
In his words:[@more@]
For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owning to our God, which we can never repay?
Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege.
Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink, but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in and for us.
I never made a sacrifice.
William Garden Blaikie, Personal Life of David Livingstone