A Burden for a Field by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Aug 24, 1905

A Burden for a Field

By W. A. S.

The Lord sometimes gives a worker special impressions concerning a particular field. The call comes to the heart with definite convictions as to the place of labor. We have seen this again and again in placing workers in the mission fields.

Yet it is doubtless the fact that this burden very often rests upon particular information and knowledge regarding the needs of the field. And in the common experience of our missionaries, I believe it may be said that most of those who are successfully working in the mission fields are there because the call for help from that particular place reached their ears; and the response was made just because there was a need to be supplied, and without waiting for any special impressions or feelings. A brother who recently accepted an appointment to a distant field, long left without a ministerial laborer, wrote thus of his experience:—

At first I felt decidedly averse to the proposition; but as I have studied the matter over, and seen in a measure the need, I have reached a more favorable conclusion. While I have long expected to sometime go to a foreign field, I have felt that the need and the fitness to fill the need constituted a call, rather than special impressions of the mind.

This is surely a reasonable view. We should go about this work for the world-wide field just as we go about the daily duties that come to our hand here. We look over the day’s task. We pray for wisdom to see what needs doing first. Then we go at it, doing with our might what our hands find to do.

Just so with our work for the world. The whole world must hear this message. Just now the Mission Board can not send the army of workers forth that ought to be going into waiting fields. But at least a few must be planting the leaven of truth amid the great mass, and getting ready to lead the strong advance that must come. Where the line is so feebly manned that one worker faces many millions, or where there are lands unentered, or where believers in pioneer fields are calling for some one to lead them, surely no one need consider personal feelings, or wait for special impressions. There is a need to be supplied. The first man to whom the call comes must decide whether he can reasonably answer or not.

God loves the world, the whole world, and with the love of God in our hearts we shall love to work anywhere in it. And we must labor to the plan that will most quickly carry this message through unentered fields. W. A. S.