Florence Nightingale and the Voice She Could Not Explain

On February 7, 1837, a sixteen-year-old English girl sitting in the garden at Embley Park recorded four words in her diary that would alter the course of modern medicine: "God spoke to me and called me to His service."

Florence Nightingale was certain she had heard something. But like young Samuel lying in the temple at Shiloh, she had no framework for what she had received. The voice was clear, yet the direction was not. Her wealthy family expected her to marry well and manage a fine household. No one around her could imagine that God might be calling a girl of privilege to scrub hospital floors and tend the dying.

For seven long years, Florence struggled to discern what the call meant. She confided in friends, studied in secret, and fought the suffocating expectations of Victorian society. It was not until she met Pastor Theodor Fliedner at the deaconess hospital in Kaiserswerth, Germany, that someone finally helped her recognize what God had been saying all along — much as old Eli finally told Samuel, "It is the Lord."

When Florence at last said yes, she revolutionized nursing and saved countless lives during the Crimean War and beyond.

Some of us have heard a stirring we cannot name. The voice has come once, twice, perhaps three times. The question of 1 Samuel 3 is not whether God is speaking. The question is whether we will finally answer, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."