The Girl Who Heard a Voice at Embley Park

On February 7, 1837, sixteen-year-old Florence Nightingale sat in her family's garden at Embley Park in Hampshire, England, and heard something she could not explain. She wrote four words in her diary that night: "God spoke to me and called me to His service."

But what service? She had no idea. Her wealthy family expected her to marry well and host dinner parties. For years, the call burned inside her like an ember she could not extinguish and could not name. She grew restless, despondent, certain she had heard something real but unable to say what it meant.

It took thirteen years — and the guidance of mentors who recognized what she could not — before the call became clear. A visit to the Kaiserswerth Institution in Germany, where Protestant deaconesses cared for the sick, finally gave shape to the voice she had heard as a girl. Nursing. Service to the suffering. That was what God had been saying all along.

Young Samuel heard the voice of the Lord three times in the night and did not recognize it. He needed Eli — older, wiser, worn down by his own failures — to say, "It is the Lord." Sometimes God's call comes long before our understanding catches up. The voice is real, but we need someone further down the road to help us name it.

If you have heard a stirring you cannot explain, do not dismiss it. And if someone young comes to you confused by a voice in the night, do what Eli did: help them answer.