Pass It On - Lettie Cowman

1870–1960

When you find words of encouragement—in the Bible, a book, a friend’s e-mail, a song—do you ever share those words of encouragement with others? It stands to reason that if you found something encouraging in those words, others might too.

Lettie Cowman certainly found encouragement through the words of others, and she wrote them down to encourage her friends. In the process, she ended up encouraging generations of Christians.

After spending twenty years as missionaries in Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan, Lettie and her husband, Charles, returned to the United States because of his failing health. Lettie spent the next six years caring for Charles until his death. During that time she devoured the writings of other Christians.

In devotionals, poems, and sermons from Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Spurgeon, Christina Rossetti, George MacDonald, and many others, Lettie found strength and encouragement each day as she sat with her ailing husband. She would read to him each morning from the various Christian books available to help them both through the long days.

After Charles’s death, Lettie took the encouraging passages from the writings she had collected and put them together in a book called Streams in the Desert. She wove together Bible verses, her own words, and the words of other Christian writers to encourage fellow missionaries when they were struggling. She didn’t know that her book would go beyond its intended readers and become one of the bestselling devotional books of all time. It’s never been out of print.

When you’re encouraged by someone else’s words, don’t keep them to yourself. Put them out there to encourage others, too. And think of how much easier it is for you today to share words of encouragement than it was for Lettie. Today, you can send those words quickly through e-mail to friends they might touch. You can post them as a Facebook status and wait to see who might comment. At your favorite coffeehouse, you can text the words of a song that moved you before the foam on your cappuccino has even disappeared. Maybe those words are exactly what someone needs to read.

Encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing.

1 Thessalonians 5:11