The Prison and the Promise in Burma

In 1813, Adoniram Judson knelt on the deck of a ship bound for Burma, freshly ordained and burning with purpose. He had heard the voice of the Almighty calling him to carry the gospel to a land where no Protestant missionary had ever set foot. The sending churches laid hands on him. The prayers were fervent. The commissioning was real.

Then came the wilderness.

Judson arrived in Rangoon to find a language so difficult it took him three years before he could hold a basic conversation. His first child died. His second child died. The Burmese government threw him into Ava prison, where he spent seventeen months in chains, starving, afflicted with fever, his feet bound to a bamboo pole hoisted toward the ceiling each night. Fellow prisoners died around him in the filth and darkness.

Six years passed before a single Burmese soul professed faith in Christ.

Yet Judson did not quit. He translated the entire Bible into Burmese. By the time he died in 1850, thousands had come to faith, and the church he planted still thrives today.

Mark tells us that immediately after the heavens opened and the Father declared Jesus His beloved Son, the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness. The commissioning and the testing were not separated by years — they were separated by a single breath. Judson learned what every follower of Christ eventually discovers: the dove and the desert come as a package. The Father's love does not spare us from the wilderness. It sustains us through it.