About the Book
"Second Chances" by Max Lucado is a collection of stories and reflections that remind readers of the transformative power of forgiveness and the opportunity for redemption that is found in God's love. Through heartfelt anecdotes and inspiring messages, Lucado encourages readers to embrace second chances and seek healing and restoration in their lives.
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.
he carried a cross through the empire - ignatius of antioch (35–107)
Shaded from the heat of a Syrian summer, an old man sits in shackles, speaking earnestly to a secretary. His words mingle conviction and compassion, like a father to his children. In the next room, ten of emperor Trajan’s legionaries drink off another day’s pay. For them, the road from Antioch to the Roman Colosseum will be long, but it is better than being sent a second time into the Dacian wars. It is August, AD 107. The prisoner’s name is Ignatius. Before his arrest just weeks ago, he was the bishop of Antioch. After the Apostles As Ignatius travels to the Colosseum, the church sits in a precarious spot. Ignatius’s mentor, the apostle John, has recently died. For the first time, there is no living witness to the resurrected Jesus. No leader who can comfort or correct the course of the church with apostolic authority. And yet the need for both comfort and correction is great. From outside the church, Roman society marginalizes Christians as “atheists” (those who do not acknowledge the Roman gods), and the authorities respond to rumors of strange rites in Christian worship with intensifying cycles of persecution. External pressure exposes internal fault lines among those claiming to follow in The Way. Doctrinal deviation creeps in, questioning the truth of the incarnation (Docetism) or requiring adherence to the law of Moses (Ebionism). Behavioral aberration crops up, as some take the name of Christian  but remain complacent in patterns in sin. Errors in both doctrine and practice multiply as the church continues to expand across the reaches of the Roman Empire. All of which serves to highlight the question of authority. The old ways of answering this question are gone: Christ has ascended, and his apostles have been martyred. The new and perpetual authorities are not yet in place: a creedal consensus on the faith, a recognition of the canon of Scripture, and the biblical structure of the church all remain undetermined. Seven Last Letters At just over seventy years old, Ignatius steps into this crucial moment in the life of the church by writing letters addressed to seven congregations along his route to Rome. His public ministry through these seven letters has been compared to a meteor, his brightest moment coming as he “blazes briefly through our atmosphere before dying in a shower of fire” ( Apostolic Fathers , 166). But Ignatius is much more concerned about his role as a pastor than as a martyr. As he writes, he cares more about the churches’ discipleship than his own death. He may, therefore, be better pictured like a weaver’s shuttle, carrying the thread of Christlikeness from east to west behind him as he passes through the empire, binding the churches together in the beautiful truths of the Christian life. The pattern he weaves, from the threads of his concern for the church as well as reflection on his own situation, is centered on the cross of Christ in at least five ways. 1. Branches of the Cross First, and foundationally, the cross was central to the earthly ministry of the Lord Jesus. Ignatius presented the cross as capturing the essence of Jesus’s life in this world. This acute moment of passive obedience was the consummation of lifelong humiliation. Jesus was, from first to last, “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). This broad view of the sufferings Jesus endured — “in every respect” (Hebrews 4:15) — opens wide the door for Ignatius, as well as those to whom he writes, to share in the sufferings of Christ. In a stunning adaptation of Jesus’s words from John 15, Ignatius writes, “If anyone is the Father’s planting, they appear as branches of the cross.” To be branches in the vine, to have his life in us, means that we must “die into his sufferings,” not only as martyrs but in our mundane life as disciples (3.1). 2. Foolishly Different Hope Second, the cross is central to the Christian proclamation of the gospel. In the gospel announcement of “Christ for us,” the “passion has been made clear to us,” and we, in turn, must make it clear to others (6.7). Ignatius celebrates the saving power that was released at Calvary: we escape death in Christ’s death; we receive the new birth only because he died on our behalf. Furthermore, as a community of the redeemed, the ministry life of the church is shaped by the crucifixion. Ignatius pictures the cross as a crane lifting living stones into the temple of God (1.9). It is this cross-shaped congregation that is regularly re-formed around the broken body and spilled blood at the Lord’s Table (1.20), proclaiming the Lord’s death until he comes. This is why the church must reject those who soften the weak and foolish offense of the cross. “[Be] deaf whenever anyone speaks to you apart from Jesus Christ — really born, really persecuted, really crucified, really raised” (3.9). Otherwise — if our hope is not evidently and “foolishly” different than that of this world — someone “might praise me but blaspheme my Lord” by denying that he was God in the flesh (6.5). 3. Greatest When Most Hated Third, the cross is central to Christian discipleship. This is true for Ignatius as he is on the way to Rome to “die for [Christ] as he died for us” (4.6). His caravan has become a classroom — “I am just now learning to be a true disciple” (1.3). But Christian discipleship is deeper and wider than the spiritual gift of martyrdom. It is wider because it applies to every believer — we are all to bear “the stamp of God” rather than “the stamp of the world” (2.5). And it is deeper because the cross places a claim on the whole of our life; once we have “taken on new life through the blood of God,” our new and “righteous nature” delights to reflect the cruciform character of God in Christ. The Spirit of Christ within us enables us to imitate him rather than the world. In response to their anger, be gentle; in response to their boasts, be humble; in response to their slander, offer prayers; in response to their errors, be steadfast in the faith; in response to their cruelty, be civilized; do not be eager to imitate them . . . [instead] let us be eager to be imitators of the Lord, to see who can be the more wronged, who the more cheated, who the more rejected, in order that no weed of the devil may be found among you. (1.10) As he wrote to the church in Rome, “Christianity is greatest [most like Jesus] when it is hated by the world” (4.3). 4. Doorway to God Fourth, the cross is central to Ignatius’s longing to commune with Christ. One of the most striking aspects of these letters is the way Ignatius pleads with the believers in Rome not to interfere with his impending martyrdom out of misplaced concern. Reflecting the way Christ has turned life and death upside down, he writes, “do not hinder me from entering into life, and do not desire my death” (4.6). Ignatius’s journey to the Colosseum is, in a tangible way, a journey into the presence of God. “To be nearer to the sword is to be nearer to God” (4.2). Yet even on the way, communion with Christ in his sufferings has turned the chains draping his body into “spiritual pearls” carried “in Christ” (1.11). In this, Ignatius sets himself as an example for us to imitate. We too must “stand firm, like an anvil being struck by a hammer” (7.3). We too are storm-tossed ships still on the way to the harbor. We too “lack many things so that we may not lack God” (3.5). And yet we do not lose heart because, as the persecuted church gathers together, Christ himself is present among his people. And Christ is he “than whom nothing is better” (2.6). Indeed, “nothing is better than him” (7.1). Because of his cross, we die into his sufferings. But because of his resurrection, suffering has turned into birth pangs, the grave has been turned into a womb, and death is a doorway into life full and everlasting. 5. Scripture Unlocked Fifth, and perhaps most immediately relevant for twenty-first-century disciples who seek to follow Ignatius as he follows Christ, the cross is central to his interpretation of Scripture. Rejecting the accusation that a crucified Messiah is unknown in Israel’s Scripture, Ignatius installs the Christ of the Gospels as the “unalterable archives” out of which the wisdom of God is to be read. The lens through which the Old Testament can be rightly understood must be the person and work of Christ (5.9). For the church in the first century and the twenty-first century, Christ is known, proclaimed, worshiped, and followed as he stands forth from the Book of God, unlocked by the key of his cross and resurrection. Christ of His Cross In considering the example of Ignatius, we can receive encouragement from his faithful witness. The testimony of his life did not seep into the sand of the Colosseum to be lost but, spread through his seven letters, watered the church. We can rejoice in the Spirit-led process by which the canon of Scripture was not only recognized but was faithfully summarized in the creeds of the church, providing us with firm ground on which to stand. Most of all, however, our attention must be drawn to the cross Ignatius carried across the empire, and to which he called the church. In many ways beyond those few listed here, the Christ of this cross is our hope, our joy, and our life.
