Povestea din Spate (EN)
Now, today I want us to look at another lesser known poet and hymn writer who provided us a gospel song that’s been a great blessing to many.
Her name was Louisa Stead. She was born in 1850 in Dover, England. She trusted Christ at the age of nine. As a teen she felt this sense of calling to become a foreign missionary. When she was twenty-one, she immigrated to the United States. During her years of living here, she attended a revival meeting where once again she felt this strong pull and call of God on her life to be a missionary, so she offered herself up for mission service.
Her desire was to go to China, but she had no-so-good health, and she wasn’t accepted to go.
She married a man whose last name was Stead. I’ve not been able to find his first name. I’m sure it’s somewhere in there, buried in the archives. One sunny, summer day, Louisa and her husband and their four-year-old daughter named Lily packed a picnic lunch and went down to the beach on Long Island, NY, near where they lived, to enjoy a few hours of playing in the sand and the water.
Now, I’ve read varying accounts of exactly what happened next, but the best I can piece it together, while they were enjoying their little picnic, the Stead family heard a scream. It was from a young boy who out in the water who was struggling against the wind and the undertow to get back to shore.
Well, Mr. Stead plunged into the water immediately and swam out to help the boy. He put his arm around the boy and tried to swim back to shore with him, but Louisa and her little girl watched helplessly from the shore as the boy kept struggling and flailing, and eventually both the boy and Mr. Stead were pulled down into the waves and drowned there in the ocean.
Well, heartbroken and now as a widow with a little girl, without her husband, Louisa struggled to provide for herself and her daughter. She told a friend:
I need faith and trust to believe that His Providence is still at work, and that His hand can still guide me through the bleak, unknown future.
Of course, in those life circumstances, and some of you have been there—some of you are there perhaps . . . It makes me think of my mother who was widowed at the age of forty with seven children, ages eight to twenty-one. At that moment the future can seem bleak and unknown. Right? But keep in mind that it’s only unknown to you. It’s not unknown to Him who orchestrates the moments and the circumstances of our lives for His glory and our good.
Well, she said: “I need faith and trust to believe that His Providence is still at work and that His hand can still guide me through this bleak, unknown future.”
One day the pantry was empty, there was nothing to eat, so Louisa led her little girl as they prayed and cried out to the Lord. They told God that He knew their need and that they were trusting in Him, asking Him to provide out of His abundance.
Well, the next morning they got up, and they found a large basket of provisions at the front door, and an envelope that had enough money in it to buy shoes for Lily. Louisa told her little girl: “We trusted God, and He has not failed us.” What a powerful lesson for a little girl to learn early in life: “We trusted God, and He has not failed us.”
--reviveourhearts.com
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Tis so sweet - hubpages.com
