God’s Glory

I will thank you, LORD, among all the people. I will sing your praises among the nations. For your unfailing love is higher than the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.

Psalm 108:3-4

During World War II, missionary Gladys Aylward was making a dangerous journey from Yangcheng over the mountains toward free China, leading more than a hundred orphans whose parents had been slaughtered by the Japanese. If she could get the children to an orphanage in free China, they would be safe, but there were hundreds of miles to go—on foot.

To keep the children walking, the missionary led them in singing hymns of God’s unfailing love. Mile by mile they continued to praise the Lord . . . until they reached the Yellow River, so vast that no one had ever swum across and survived. The Japanese had closed the river, and Gladys was afraid they would die there. Weary, starving, and with no hope of reaching safety, Gladys spent a sleepless night. Her thirteen-year-old adopted daughter saw how distressed she was and reminded her of Moses and how God had parted the Red Sea so the Israelites could cross.

“But I am not Moses!” Gladys cried in desperation.

“Of course you aren’t,” the young girl said. “But Jehovah is still God!”

These few hope-filled words turned Gladys’s focus from the impossibility of their situation to the God whose unfailing love reaches to the clouds. She led the children in thanking God, and they began singing praises once again. Before long a Chinese nationalist down the river heard what he thought might be an Allied helicopter. When he saw it was a woman and children singing, he risked his life to carry boatloads of orphans across the river. Gladys and the children made it safely through the mountains to the orphanage, not only proving God’s faithfulness to them but also bringing God glory as other believers heard the story.

God, just as you were faithful to this missionary, you promise to be for me. I surrender my fears and trust in you to see me through. Grant me grace to praise and thank you this day and to see your glory, no matter what!

In God’s faithfulness lies eternal security.

Corrie Ten Boom(1892–1983), Dutch author, speaker, and concentration camp survivor