Left Alone

Left Alone

Adoniram Judson, pioneer missionary to Burma, gave up everything for Christ.

ADONIRAM JUDSON had buried his only son in Burma and barely survived a horrifying seventeen-month imprisonment. During the fall of 1826, he was separated from his family for a few months while assisting the English government in negotiations with the Burmese king. Back at their mission station his wife, Ann, became very sick. While preparing to return to her, Judson received the following letter from the mission: “My Dear Sir: To one who has suffered so much, and with such exemplary fortitude, there needs but little preface to tell a tale of distress. It were cruel indeed to torture you with doubt and suspense. To sum up the unhappy tidings in a few words, Mrs. Judson is no more.”

After receiving this devastating news, Judson wrote to Ann’s mother: “Dear Mother Hasseltine: this letter, though intended for the whole family, I address particularly to you; for it is a mother’s heart that will be most deeply interested in its melancholy details. I propose to give you, at different times, some account of my great, irreparable loss, of which you will have heard before receiving this letter.”

He went on to describe the great work Ann had been accomplishing in Amherst, Burma, building a school and taking care of their sick two-year-old, Maria. He described his immense pain at not being able to comfort her during her sudden illness and death. He ended with this outpouring of grief and hope:

I will not trouble you, my dear mother, with an account of my own private feelings—the bitter, heart-rending anguish, which for some days would admit of no mitigation, and the comfort which the Gospel subsequently afforded. . . . Blessed assurance—and let us apply it afresh to our hearts,—that, while I am writing and you perusing these lines, her spirit is resting and rejoicing in the heavenly paradise,—

Where glories shine, and pleasures roll

That charm, delight, transport the soul;

And every panting wish shall be

Possessed of boundless bliss in Thee.

And there, my dear mother, we also shall soon be, uniting and participating in the felicities of heaven with her for whom we now mourn. ‘Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.’

Although Maria seemed to recover after her mother’s death, she died just a few months later. At the age of thirty-nine, Judson found himself alone, his wife and two children buried in Burma. He again wrote to his mother-in-law:

Amherst, April 26, 1827

My little Maria lies by the side of her fond mother. The complaint to which she was subject several months proved incurable. She had the best medical advice; and the kind care of Mrs. Wade could not have been, in any respect, exceeded by that of her own mother. But . . . the work of death went forward, and after the usual process, excruciating to a parent’s heart, she ceased to breathe on the 24th instant, at 3 o’clock P.M., aged two years and three months. . . . The next morning we made her last bed in the small enclosure that surrounds her mother’s lonely grave. Together they rest in hope . . . and together, I trust, their spirits are rejoicing after a short separation of precisely six months.

And I am left alone in the wide world. My own dear family I have buried; one in Rangoon, and two in Amherst. What remains for me but to hold myself in readiness to follow the dear departed to that blessed world,

Where my best friends, my kindred dwell,

Where God, my Saviour, reigns.

Reflection

If you were to have an experience like Adoniram Judson’s, how do you think you would react? What hope do you have to hold on to?

If we have hope in Christ only for this life, we are the most miserable people in the world. But the fact is that Christ has been raised from the dead. He has become the first of a great harvest of those who will be raised to life again.

1 Corinthians 15:19-20