Ann Judson wrote of the death of their beloved child:
Our hearts were bound up with this child; we felt he was our earthly all, our only source of innocent recreation in this heathen land. But God saw it was necessary to remind us of our error, and to strip us of our only little all. O, may it not be vain that he has done it. May we so improve it that he will stay his hand and say 'It is enough.’[1]
Before setting sail to the golden shore of Burma, Adoniram and Ann Judson had a small glimpse of the arduous cross they were destined to bear. Were they willing to consent their lives to the exposure of the dangers of the ocean, to sickness, uncertainty, and every kind of distress, poverty, insult, imprisonment, and perhaps even a brutal death? Were they willing to abandon the life they new, the family they loved, in hope of seeing perishing souls saved from undying woe and gloom? Indeed, Adoniram and Ann knew this call would demand, no less than “their earthly all”. Their willingness to daily bear the cross of Christ and die to self was one of God’s strategic designs to exalt the fame of His Name among the Burmese people. Nearly 200 years later, the ripple effect of their faith still continues to drift into eternity as their graves echo the triumph of Christ: O death, where is your sting? Their lives continue to stand as a beacon that illuminates the mystery of how through Christ, death has been swallowed up in victory.
[1] Courtney Anderson, To the Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1956), 193.
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