The Cobbler Who Became a Light to the Nations

In 1786, a young cobbler named William Carey stood before a gathering of Baptist ministers in Northampton, England, and suggested that Christians had an obligation to carry the gospel to unreached peoples. An older pastor reportedly snapped, "Sit down, young man. When God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine."

Carey sat down. But he could not silence the call that had burned in him since boyhood — a call he believed God had placed in him before he ever mended his first shoe.

Seven years later, Carey sailed for India. For seven more years, he labored without a single convert. He buried his five-year-old son in foreign soil. His wife suffered a mental breakdown. By every visible measure, he had spent his strength for nothing and in vain.

Yet Carey pressed on. He translated the Bible into six languages and portions into twenty-nine more. He founded schools, fought the practice of widow burning, and planted seeds that would grow into one of the largest Christian communities in Asia. The despised cobbler whom seasoned ministers had dismissed became the father of the modern missionary movement — a light to nations he would never visit.

Isaiah's Servant knew this same ache — called from the womb, hidden like a polished arrow, laboring in apparent futility. Yet the Lord declared the mission was not too small but too large to contain. What looked like failure was preparation. What felt like obscurity was the quiver of the Almighty.