A Burden Heavier Than Iron

In 1660, John Bunyan was arrested for preaching without a license and thrown into Bedford County Jail. He was offered freedom on one condition: stop preaching. He refused, and spent years behind bars — separated from his wife and four children, including a blind daughter he called "the apple of his eye."

Most men would have broken. Bunyan did not.

In those long prison years, he wrote. Out of that confined stillness came The Pilgrim's Progress — the story of a man named Christian who sets out for the Celestial City carrying an enormous burden on his back. Christian faces the Slough of Despond, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and Doubting Castle. He is mocked, betrayed, and nearly undone. But he keeps walking.

Bunyan knew something about walking under a burden. The story he told was the story he was living.

The Pilgrim's Progress became one of the most widely read books in the English language, second only to the Bible in its reach. But it was born in a prison cell, not a comfortable study.

The Almighty does some of His deepest work in confined places. When the road narrows and every reasonable voice says to stop, He is not absent. He is forming something in you that can only be forged in the long, difficult middle.

Keep walking.