He Is Worth It

During China's Boxer Rebellion at the turn of the twentieth century, no foreigner was safe. The Boxers opposed all foreign influences, including Christian missionaries. Diplomats fled to a compound in Beijing, but missionaries in the outer provinces had few choices.

Local officials in Fenzhou, Shanxi province, were relatively accepting of missionaries, so a number of missionaries fled there in hope that they would be sage until the uprising ended. After they arrived, the governor of Shanxi, a noted Boxer sympathizer, assigned a new magistrate to Fenzhou. The magistrate promptly posted an armed guard over the foreigners.

One of the missionaries, Lizzie Atwater, was pregnant at the time. She wrote a final letter to her parents on August 3, 1900:

"Dear Ones, I long for a sight of your dear faces, but I fear we shall not meet on earth... I am preparing for the end very quietly and calmly. The Lord is wonderfully near, and He will not fail me. I was very restless and excited while there seemed a chance of life, but God has taken away that feeling, and now I just pray for grace to meet the terrible end bravely. The pain will soon be over, and oh the sweetness of the welcome above!

My little baby will go with me. I think God will give it to me in Heaven, and my dear mother will be so glad to see us. I cannot imagine the Savior's welcome. Oh, that will compensate for all of these days of suspense. Dear ones, live near to God and cling less closely to earth. There is no other way by which we can receive that peace from God which passeth understanding.... I must keep calm and still these hours. I do not regret coming to China, but am sorry I have done so little. My married life, two precious years, have been so very full of happiness. We will die together, my dear husband and I.

I used to dread separation. If we escape now it will be a miracle. I send my love to all of you, and the dear friends who remember me."

Twelve days later, Lizzie, her husband, their unborn baby and six other missionaries were hacked to death by their guards.

Later, when Lizzie's parents in Oberlin, Ohio, heard the dreadful news of the death of their daughter, son-in-law, and unborn grandchild, they said, in tears, "We do not begrudge them - we gave them to that needy land; China will yet believe the truth."

~ AsiaHarvest.org

Philippians 1:20-21

[I]t is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

Philippians 3:8-11

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

This woman could feel these words in her heart. Even in the midst of persecution and on the brink of death she counted the cost and saw Christ as more precious than anything else this world has to offer. “Dear ones, live near to God and cling less closely to earth. There is no other way by which we can receive that peace from God which passeth understanding.... I must keep calm and still these hours. I do not regret coming to China, but am sorry I have done so little.”

Even though she, along with her family were going to lose their very lives, she still did not regret answering God’s call to “Go… and make disciples of all nations.” She with child, alongside her husband and six other missionaries were willing to give everything so that the Gospel might be known to the unreached and that the glory of the Lord might be proclaimed.

She did not feel alone or forsaken by Christ in the face of death, instead she felt His faithfulness to His promise, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”   

“I am preparing for the end very quietly and calmly. The Lord is wonderfully near, and He will not fail me.”

O, that the Lord might grant us the courage and the passion to trust in His promises and “count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus.” That we might say with full conviction, “to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” And that the Lord would change our hearts and minds so that we could say with Paul that “it is [our] eager expectation and hope that [we] will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in [our] body, whether by life or by death.”