The Cobbler God Sent to the Nations

In 1792, a young cobbler named William Carey stood before a gathering of Baptist ministers in Northampton, England, and proposed that Christians had an obligation to carry the gospel to the ends of the earth. An older minister reportedly thundered, "Sit down, young man! When God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine."

The establishment looked at Carey and saw what Jesse's neighbors would have seen in David — nothing impressive. No university degree. No ordination from a prestigious institution. Just a self-taught shoemaker from a rural village who mended boots by day and studied maps and languages by candlelight. He had taught himself Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and Dutch while stitching leather soles.

But the Almighty was not looking at credentials. He was looking at a heart consumed with longing for the nations. While learned theologians debated whether missions were even necessary, this overlooked cobbler burned with a fire they could not see.

Carey sailed for India in 1793 and spent forty-one years translating Scripture into over forty languages, never once returning to England.

When Samuel arrived at Jesse's house, he nearly anointed the wrong son — the tall, commanding Eliab. God corrected him: "The Lord does not look at what people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." The cobbler nobody took seriously became the father of modern missions, because God's eyes see what ours so often miss.