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About the Book
"A Voice in the Wind" by Francine Rivers follows the intertwining lives of Hadassah, a Hebrew slave girl in ancient Rome, Marcus, a wealthy and conflicted Roman aristocrat, and Julia, a spoiled and selfish Roman noblewoman. As their lives collide, they are forced to confront their beliefs, values, and choices in the midst of the cruelty and chaos of the Roman Empire. The novel explores themes of love, faith, sacrifice, redemption, and the power of forgiveness in a gripping and emotional tale of courage and hope.
William Carey
"Expect great things; attempt great things."
At a meeting of Baptist leaders in the late 1700s, a newly ordained minister stood to argue for the value of overseas missions. He was abruptly interrupted by an older minister who said, "Young man, sit down! You are an enthusiast. When God pleases to convert the heathen, he'll do it without consulting you or me."
That such an attitude is inconceivable today is largely due to the subsequent efforts of that young man, William Carey.
Plodder Carey was raised in the obscure, rural village of Paulerpury, in the middle of England. He apprenticed in a local cobbler's shop, where the nominal Anglican was converted. He enthusiastically took up the faith, and though little educated, the young convert borrowed a Greek grammar and proceeded to teach himself New Testament Greek.
When his master died, he took up shoemaking in nearby Hackleton, where he met and married Dorothy Plackett, who soon gave birth to a daughter. But the apprentice cobbler's life was hard—the child died at age 2—and his pay was insufficient. Carey's family sunk into poverty and stayed there even after he took over the business.
"I can plod," he wrote later, "I can persevere to any definite pursuit." All the while, he continued his language studies, adding Hebrew and Latin, and became a preacher with the Particular Baptists. He also continued pursuing his lifelong interest in international affairs, especially the religious life of other cultures.
Carey was impressed with early Moravian missionaries and was increasingly dismayed at his fellow Protestants' lack of missions interest. In response, he penned An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens. He argued that Jesus' Great Commission applied to all Christians of all times, and he castigated fellow believers of his day for ignoring it: "Multitudes sit at ease and give themselves no concern about the far greater part of their fellow sinners, who to this day, are lost in ignorance and idolatry."
Carey didn't stop there: in 1792 he organized a missionary society, and at its inaugural meeting preached a sermon with the call, "Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God!" Within a year, Carey, John Thomas (a former surgeon), and Carey's family (which now included three boys, and another child on the way) were on a ship headed for India.
Stranger in a strange land
Thomas and Carey had grossly underestimated what it would cost to live in India, and Carey's early years there were miserable. When Thomas deserted the enterprise, Carey was forced to move his family repeatedly as he sought employment that could sustain them. Illness racked the family, and loneliness and regret set it: "I am in a strange land," he wrote, "no Christian friend, a large family, and nothing to supply their wants." But he also retained hope: "Well, I have God, and his word is sure."
He learned Bengali with the help of a pundit, and in a few weeks began translating the Bible into Bengali and preaching to small gatherings.
When Carey himself contracted malaria, and then his 5-year-old Peter died of dysentery, it became too much for his wife, Dorothy, whose mental health deteriorated rapidly. She suffered delusions, accusing Carey of adultery and threatening him with a knife. She eventually had to be confined to a room and physically restrained.
"This is indeed the valley of the shadow of death to me," Carey wrote, though characteristically added, "But I rejoice that I am here notwithstanding; and God is here."
Gift of tongues
In October 1799, things finally turned. He was invited to locate in a Danish settlement in Serampore, near Calcutta. He was now under the protection of the Danes, who permitted him to preach legally (in the British-controlled areas of India, all of Carey's missionary work had been illegal).
Carey was joined by William Ward, a printer, and Joshua and Hanna Marshman, teachers. Mission finances increased considerably as Ward began securing government printing contracts, the Marshmans opened schools for children, and Carey began teaching at Fort William College in Calcutta.
In December 1800, after seven years of missionary labor, Carey baptized his first convert, Krishna Pal, and two months later, he published his first Bengali New Testament. With this and subsequent editions, Carey and his colleagues laid the foundation for the study of modern Bengali, which up to this time had been an "unsettled dialect."
Carey continued to expect great things; over the next 28 years, he and his pundits translated the entire Bible into India's major languages: Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Hindi, Assamese, and Sanskrit and parts of 209 other languages and dialects.
He also sought social reform in India, including the abolition of infanticide, widow burning (sati), and assisted suicide. He and the Marshmans founded Serampore College in 1818, a divinity school for Indians, which today offers theological and liberal arts education for some 2,500 students.
By the time Carey died, he had spent 41 years in India without a furlough. His mission could count only some 700 converts in a nation of millions, but he had laid an impressive foundation of Bible translations, education, and social reform.
His greatest legacy was in the worldwide missionary movement of the nineteenth century that he inspired. Missionaries like Adoniram Judson, Hudson Taylor, and David Livingstone, among thousands of others, were impressed not only by Carey's example, but by his words "Expect great things; attempt great things." The history of nineteenth-century Protestant missions is in many ways an extended commentary on the phrase.
What Cravings Will Take from You
We spend our lives with hands out and mouths open, looking for what we might consume. This is our experience as humans, in part because of how God designed us: we eat because our bodies require energy, and we reach with gentle affection for those we love out of a shared hunger for relationships. We’re born in need, and our desires, implanted by God himself (Acts 17:24–27), send us on a search for fullness of joy. Our desires, however, so easily turn into obsessions, leading us into wild over-consumption (James 4:1–3). Our desires become cravings, the ultimate pursuit and point of life itself. Rather than signals meant to send us off in exploration for the original source of joy (Psalm 16:11), they instead become taskmasters, demanding our undivided loyalty and taking our peace and joy right along with them. In our unchecked drive to consume, we ourselves become the ones consumed. My Primary (False) Allegiance When we don’t allow our desires to send us seeking fullness of joy from the source of all joy — God himself — we develop an allegiance to false kings. My primary false allegiance is to the love and admiration that come from other people. I crave validation, and I find myself performing for it like a circus animal. This is how I’ve come to know just how much I’ve allowed this false king to rule over me: the past few years have been brutal, full of confusion and emotional pain. Somewhere along the way, my heart, bowing before this false king, started aching for belonging. I started wondering if my presence mattered as a person and not as a performance. I started wondering if I was truly known. I started wondering if anyone might notice my need. My deep self-focus drew me further and further inside, and at some point I simply disengaged my heart. If I couldn’t have what I craved, I would not give of myself any longer. I began to look back at who I once was and how passionately I’d loved others, and I wanted so badly to be that person again. But I couldn’t manufacture love, and I started to believe that joy would never come again. My heart instead felt hard and apathetic, looking to be served, noticing every slight, envying the belonging of others. False Kings Only Take The trouble for an idolatrous heart (and the gift for the repentant heart) is that God will stubbornly interrupt and intercept our pursuit of joy as we seek it in anything less than him. He will not give us lasting peace in our false allegiances, because he is jealous for us to have the actual peace we’re pursuing. In those years of struggle, a chorus of people could have sung my praises, and it never would have settled as peace in my heart. Anytime a friend offered a word of encouragement, my mind immediately turned to panic: “What must I do to keep that love?” Or I’d think, “What about the one who didn’t voice encouragement? How do I win her over?” I was so hungry and thirsty that I was withering away, consumed by what I was trying to consume. False kings never give; they only take. Kings Who Take When the prophet Samuel was growing old, the Israelites worried about their future. Samuel had mediated for them well as both priest and prophet before God, but they needed a new leader, and humanly speaking, there were no options available. Samuel’s sons, the next sure thing for the nation, didn’t walk in the ways of the Lord, so the elders sought answers by looking around at how other nations were structured. They approached Samuel with their solution: “Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations” (1 Samuel 8:5). At first glance, this doesn’t seem like such a bad request, but Scripture says it displeased Samuel, and it also displeased God, because the elders hadn’t thought to bring God into their calculations (1 Samuel 8:6–9). Did they not already have a King? They had, in effect, spurned the perfect rule of the One who’d delivered, provided for, led, and protected them, and they’d turned in their desire toward another option. They weren’t ready to reject God entirely. They just wanted him plus a safe, tangible plan B king like everyone else around them. Samuel’s response is a fair warning to us as well about plan B kings: they will only take from you. Samuel warns that a king appointed by people takes sons and sends them to war, takes children and turns them into slave labor, takes daughters into his service, and takes crops in order to feed his servants (1 Samuel 8:10–17). Samuel knows what false kings do: they take our best and then make us their slaves. Kingdoms with Two Kings We tend to believe the same as the Israelite elders: What will it hurt to have God and also hedge our bets a little? We want to believe we can pledge allegiance to King Jesus and also throw our heart to human kings or human things. But the Bible is plain: No one can serve two masters (Matthew 6:24). A divided kingdom cannot stand (Matthew 12:25). Jesus is our king, not merely a wise consultant we turn to when we need to know what to do. And as the Israelite leaders show us, a divided heart is actually not divided at all: it has already chosen sides. A divided heart is one that’s spurned God. We turn toward false kings who we think will give us comfort, security, belonging, approval, validation, love, sexual gratification — but in the end they only take. They promise life but give death. Consumed to Satisfy But God. Through Jesus Christ, he made a way for us out of this death spiral, giving us a direction to point our desires, providing something we can consume that doesn’t consume us in return. Jesus came saying, Repent and believe (Mark 1:15). His words were an invitation, a stretched-out hand, an open door for us to enter with him into the kingdom of God. Jesus came saying, This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood, poured out for you (Luke 22:19–20). Feed on me (John 6:51–58). Jesus was consumed by death precisely so that we would feast on him. This king is called Bread of Life (John 6:35) and Living Water (John 4:13–14), so we might know we can, in our hunger, eat, and in our thirst, drink. When we consume him, we find ourselves consuming his good rule, loving provision, and peaceful reign. We cannot reach the end of him, but in him we can certainly satisfy the longing underlying all of our desires: the longing for joy. The King Who Gives The Israelites placed a mirror before my heart, helping me see my false allegiances clearly. My actions were their actions: turning toward kings who couldn’t fulfill their promises. Like them, my desires and needs weren’t all wrong; what had been wrong was where I turned with them. I turned in repentance to Jesus and found joy again in allegiance to him. Do you have a need? A desire? Submit it totally to King Jesus. He doesn’t just require our allegiance, as if obedience is a form of punishment or something through which we grit our teeth. His demand of wholeheartedness is an invitation to receive what is his: the very kingdom (Matthew 5:3). He opens his treasury to us, sharing his peace, love, joy, life, and fruitfulness. And perhaps best of all, we receive his allegiance in return (Romans 8:38–39; Matthew 28:20; Hebrews 13:5). He is a king who gives. Article by Christine Hoover
