When Light Came Bursting In

Light shines in the darkness for the godly.

Psalm 112:4

Before Hudson Taylor was born, his parents dedicated him to God for mission work in China. But although he was raised in a godly home, he went through troubled times as a teenager. He resisted the authority of his father, wanted nothing to do with the church, and experienced many struggles and spiritual doubts. He moved away from the Christian beliefs of his parents, which led his mother and sister to pray for him constantly.

When Hudson was seventeen and in great turmoil and rebellion, his mother was so concerned for the darkness overtaking his soul she locked herself in a room at her sister’s house fifty miles away from their home. She resolved to stay there in prayer until she had clear assurance from God for her son’s conversion.

Hudson Taylor later reported that the very afternoon his mother was interceding so earnestly for him he came upon a gospel tract about the finished work of Christ. He read it and accepted the Savior and his salvation. This young man’s whole life underwent sweeping transformation as light came bursting into his soul. Several months later, during intense prayer for guidance, Taylor heard God call him to ministry in China, and he immediately began studying and preparing to go. From that point on, he lived by faith, devoting himself to the poor and preaching to the needy. He pursued medical studies so he would be more useful on the mission field and arrived in Shanghai, China, in 1854.

In his fifty-one years in China, Taylor took more than eight hundred missionaries to serve throughout the provinces of China, in three hundred mission stations. Historians record that no other missionary since the apostle Paul has had a greater vision, plan, and reach for a vast nation than did Hudson Taylor. As a result of his life’s work, millions of Chinese heard the gospel of Christ, and generations of people after him were inspired to full-time missionary service.

I praise you, God, that your light pierces the darkness and that there is no place so dark that your light and love cannot penetrate it.

Darkness is my point of view, my right to myself; light is God’s point of view.

Oswald Chambers(1874–1917), Scottish minister and teacher