Daily Reading for December 2 • Channing Moore Williams, Missionary Bishop in China and Japan, 1910
In a former journal, I mentioned that Mr. Liggins and myself had determined on making an attempt to establish a new mission station at Tá-Tsong. We made the effort, but failed, as no one was disposed to incur the wrath from the Mandarin for renting us a house. We returned to Shanghai at the time, much discouraged at our want of success, but now that we are established at a place in nearly every respect superior, we rejoice at our failure. We can now look back and recognize “the hand of our God which was good upon us,” leading us by a way that we knew not, and opening a wide and, I trust, effectual door for preaching the blessed gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. . . .
We should therefore labor and faint not. Because we do not meet with immediate success, we have no right to be discouraged and to relax our efforts. This is too much like dictating to God. It is almost as if we should say to him, because you do not give success in the manner, the measure, and at the time we wish, we work no longer. God’s ways are not as man’s ways, and we must labor untiringly when and where he directs. He will see to the rest.
From a letter of Channing Moore Williams, quoted in Celebrating the Saints: Devotional Readings for Saints’ Days by Robert Atwell and Christopher Webber. Copyright © 2001. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com