The Cobbler's Trickle That Became a Flood

In 1793, a Northamptonshire cobbler named William Carey stepped off a ship in Calcutta with little more than a printing press and a stubborn conviction that the Gospel must flow beyond England's borders. His missionary society had begun with a pitiful twelve pounds, thirteen shillings, and twopence — barely a trickle from a handful of Baptist churches. His own denomination had mocked the idea. "Sit down, young man," an older minister had told him. "When God wants to convert the heathen, He will do it without your help."

But Carey sat down at his workbench instead and kept stitching shoes — and kept dreaming. Within a decade, that trickle had become a current. He translated scripture into Bengali, Sanskrit, and eventually over forty languages. He founded schools, established a college at Serampore, and campaigned against the burning of widows. Where his work flowed, literacy followed. Dignity followed. Hope followed.

Ezekiel saw water seeping from beneath the temple threshold — ankle-deep, then knee-deep, then a river no one could cross. Wherever it flowed, everything lived. Trees sprang up along its banks, bearing fruit every month, their leaves for healing.

God's living water rarely arrives as a flood. It begins as a seep beneath the door, a cobbler's prayer, a few coins in a collection plate. But the Almighty who sends the trickle is the same God who swells it into a river that makes even dead places breathe again.