Don’t put out the Spirit’s fire. (1 Thessalonians 5:19 GW)

William Bordon, after he graduated from high school in 1904, was called to be a missionary.  At different points in Bordon's short life, he wrote in the back of his Bible, no reserves, no retreats, no regrets.

Though he came from a very wealthy family, wealth did not possess him.  Early on in his life, a friend expressed that he was throwing his life away by becoming a missionary—he wrote in his Bible, no reserves.  After he graduated from Yale, he was offered very lucrative positions—he penned, no retreats.  His missionary call narrowed to a Muslim group in China.  After doing graduate work at Princeton Seminary, he left for Egypt to study Arabic before arriving in China.  In Egypt, he contracted spinal meningitis and within a month was dead at age twenty-five.  Before his death, under the other two notations he had made in his Bible, he wrote—no regrets.

Was William Borden's seemingly untimely death a waste of human life?  Absolutely not.  Thousands of people have read his story and have been encouraged in their missionary call. God never wastes any of our sorrows.

Things happen to Christians.  We experience what we don't expect, and some expectations don't come to fruition.  The Christian life often entails disappointments that we can't understand, but God uses them for his ultimate good.

Church history is littered with people who have done great things for God yet had become sullen and cynical at the end of their lives.  Things happened to them that may have seemed unfair or unjust.  We, like William Borden, at the end of our journey, need to be able to say, no reserves, no retreats, no regrets.

I worked for seventeen years as a missionary with Youth With A Mission.  My missionary work has taken me to Mexico, Canada, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Spain, and Ukraine.  I hold a Masters of Education in curriculum and instruction from Virginia Commonwealth University.  [email protected]