The Long Defeat of William Wilberforce

In 1787, a twenty-seven-year-old member of Parliament sat at his desk in Old Palace Yard, London, and scratched two sentences into his journal: "God Almighty has set before me two great objects: the suppression of the slave trade, and the reformation of manners." William Wilberforce had no idea that sentence would cost him nearly everything — his health, his reputation, and two decades of defeat.

Year after year, Wilberforce introduced his abolition bill. Year after year, Parliament voted it down. Colleagues mocked him. Slave traders burned him in effigy. His body, already frail, buckled under the strain. By the late 1790s, he confided to friends that he feared his life's work had been utterly wasted — that he had labored "for nothing" and spent his strength "for vanity."

Those are the Servant's own words in Isaiah 49:4. Yet the Lord's answer to that despair is breathtaking: "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant... I will make you as a light for the nations." God's purpose was always larger than the Servant imagined.

Wilberforce lived to see the Slavery Abolition Act pass in 1833, three days before his death. The work he thought was futile became a light that reached far beyond Britain's shores. When the Almighty calls someone from the womb and shapes them like a polished arrow, no number of defeats can cancel that purpose.