No Reserves, No Retreats, No Regrets

In 1904, sixteen-year-old William Borden graduated from a prestigious Chicago prep school as heir to the Borden dairy fortune. His family sent him on a world tour, expecting it to sharpen his business instincts. Instead, the suffering he witnessed in Asia broke his heart wide open. He wrote two words in the back of his Bible: "No reserves."

At Yale, Borden gave away hundreds of thousands of dollars to missions organizations. Friends called it reckless. His family urged practicality. When he turned down lucrative job offers after graduation to pursue missionary work among Muslims in China, acquaintances whispered that he was throwing his life away. He added two more words to his Bible: "No retreats."

Borden sailed for Egypt in 1913 to study Arabic before continuing to China. Within weeks, he contracted cerebral meningitis. He died in Cairo at twenty-five, never reaching the people he had given everything to serve. After his death, those who opened his Bible found a final entry beneath the others: "No regrets."

The world saw waste — a fortune spent, a brilliant life cut short, a mission never completed. But Borden understood what Mary of Bethany knew when she shattered that alabaster jar of nard worth a year's wages and poured it over the feet of Jesus. Some acts of devotion cannot be measured by what they accomplish. They can only be measured by the love that compels them. The fragrance of such surrender fills the whole house — and it lingers for centuries.