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About the Book
"The Priestly Bride" by Anna Rountree is a spiritual book that delves into the intimate relationship between the believer and Jesus Christ. Through allegorical tales and Biblical references, the book explores the concept of the church as the bride of Christ and the importance of intimacy, submission, and love in the believer's relationship with God. It encourages readers to deepen their faith and draw closer to God through prayer, worship, and obedience.
Gladys Aylward
Gladys Aylward was born in London in 1904 (or a few years earlier). She worked for several years as a parlormaid, and then attended a revival meeting at which the preacher spoke of dedicating one's life to the service of God. Gladys responded to the message, and soon after became convinced that she was called to preach the Gospel in China. At the age of 26, she became a probationer at the China Inland Mission Center in London, but was failed to pass the examinations. She worked at other jobs and saved her money. Then she heard of a 73-year-old missionary, Mrs. Jeannie Lawson, who was looking for a younger woman to carry on her work. Gladys wrote to Mrs. Lawson and was accepted if she could get to China. She did not have enough money for the ship fare, but did have enough for the train fare, and so in October of 1930 she set out from London with her passport, her Bible, her tickets, and two pounds ninepence, to travel to China by the Trans-Siberian Railway, despite the fact that China and the Soviet Union were engaged in an undeclared war. She arrived in Vladivostok and sailed from there to Japan and from Japan to Tientsin, and thence by train, then bus, then mule, to the inland city of Yangchen, in the mountainous province of Shansi, a little south of Peking (Beijing). Most of the residents had seen no Europeans other than Mrs. Lawson and now Miss Aylward. They distrusted them as foreigners, and were not disposed to listen to them.
Yangchen was an overnight stop for mule caravans that carried coal, raw cotton, pots, and iron goods on six-week or three-month journeys. It occurred to the two women that their most effective way of preaching would be to set up an inn. The building in which they lived had once been an inn, and with a bit of repair work could be used as one again. They laid in a supply of food for mules and men, and when next a caravan came past, Gladys dashed out, grabbed the rein of the lead mule, and turned it into their courtyard. It went willingly, knowing by experience that turning into a courtyard meant food and water and rest for the night. The other mules followed, and the muleteers had no choice. They were given good food and warm beds at the standard price, and their mules were well cared for, and there was free entertainment in the evening--the inkeepers told stories about a man named Jesus. After the first few weeks, Gladys did not need to kidnap customers -- they turned in at the inn by preference. Some became Christians, and many of them (both Christians and non-Christians) remembered the stories, and retold them more or less accurately to other muleteers at other stops along the caravan trails. Gladys practiced her Chinese for hours each day, and was becoming fluent and comfortable with it. Then Mrs. Lawson suffered a severe fall, and died a few days later. Gladys Aylward was left to run the mission alone, with the aid of one Chinese Christian, Yang, the cook.
A few weeks after the death of Mrs. Lawson, Miss Aylward met the Mandarin of Yangchen. He arrived in a sedan chair, with an impressive escort, and told her that the government had decreed an end to the practice of footbinding. (Note: Among the upper and middle classes, it had for centuries been the custom that a woman's foot should be wrapped tightly in bandages from infancy, to prevent it from growing. Thus grown women had extremely tiny feet, on which they could walk only with slow, tottering steps, which were thought to be extremely graceful.) The government needed a foot-inspector, a woman (so that she could invade the women's quarters without scandal), with her own feet unbound (so that she could travel), who would patrol the district enforcing the decree. It was soon clear to them both that Gladys was the only possible candidate for the job, and she accepted, realizing that it would give her undreamed-of opportunities to spread the Gospel.
During her second year in Yangchen, Gladys was summoned by the Mandarin. A riot had broken out in the men's prison. She arrived and found that the convicts were rampaging in the prison courtyard, and several of them had been killed. The soldiers were afraid to intervene. The warden of the prison said to Gladys, "Go into the yard and stop the rioting." She said, "How can I do that?" The warden said, "You have been preaching that those who trust in Christ have nothing to fear." She walked into the courtyard and shouted: "Quiet! I cannot hear when everyone is shouting at once. Choose one or two spokesmen, and let me talk with them." The men quieted down and chose a spokesman. Gladys talked with him, and then came out and told the warden: "You have these men cooped up in crowded conditions with absolutely nothing to do. No wonder they are so edgy that a small dispute sets off a riot. You must give them work. Also, I am told that you do not supply food for them, so that they have only what their relatives send them. No wonder they fight over food. We will set up looms so that they can weave cloth and earn enough money to buy their own food." This was done. There was no money for sweeping reforms, but a few friends of the warden donated old looms, and a grindstone so that the men could work grinding grain. The people began to call Gladys Aylward "Ai-weh-deh," which means "Virtuous One." It was her name from then on.
Soon after, she saw a woman begging by the road, accompanied by a child covered with sores and obviously suffering severe malnutrition. She satisfied herself that the woman was not the child's mother, but had kidnapped the child and was using it as an aid to her begging. She bought the child for ninepence--a girl about five years old. A year later, "Ninepence" came in with an abandoned boy in tow, saying, "I will eat less, so that he can have something." Thus Ai-weh-deh acquired a second orphan, "Less." And so her family began to grow.... She was a regular and welcome visitor at the palace of the Mandarin, who found her religion ridiculous, but her conversation stimulating. In 1936, she officially became a Chinese citizen. She lived frugally and dressed like the people around her (as did the missionaries who arrived a few years after in in the neighboring town of Tsechow, David and Jean Davis and their young son Murray, of Wales), and this was a major factor in making her preaching effective.
Then the war came. In the spring of 1938, Japanese planes bombed the city of Yangcheng, killing many and causing the survivors to flee into the mountains. Five days later, the Japanese Army occupied Yangcheng, then left, then came again, then left. The Mandarin gathered the survivors and told them to retreat into the mountains for the duration. He also announced that he was impressed by the life of Ai-weh-deh and wished to make her faith his own. There remained the question of the convicts at the jail. The traditional policy favored beheading them all lest they escape. The Mandarin asked Ai-weh-deh for advice, and a plan was made for relatives and friends of the convicts to post a bond guaranteeing their good behavior. Every man was eventually released on bond. As the war continued Gladys often found herself behind Japanese lines, and often passed on information, when she had it, to the armies of China, her adopted country. She met and became friends with "General Ley," a Roman Catholic priest from Europe who had teken up arms when the Japanese invaded, and now headed a guerilla force. Finally he sent her a message. The Japanese are coming in full force. We are retreating. Come with us." Angry, she scrawled a Chinese note, Chi Tao Tu Pu Twai, "Christians never retreat!" He sent back a copy of a Japanese handbill offering $100 each for the capture, dead or alive, of (1) the Mandarin, (2) a prominent merchant, and (3) Ai-weh-deh. She determined to flee to the government orphanage at Sian, bringing with her the children she had accumulated, about 100 in number. (An additional 100 had gone ahead earlier with a colleague.) With the children in tow, she walked for twelve days. Some nights they found shelter with friendly hosts. Some nights they spent unprotected on the mountainsides. On the twelfth day, they arrived at the Yellow River, with no way to cross it. All boat traffic had stopped, and all civilian boats had been seized to keep them out of the hands of the Japanese. The children wanted to know, "Why don't we cross?" She said, "There are no boats." They said, "God can do anything. Ask Him to get us across." They all knelt and prayed. Then they sang. A Chinese officer with a patrol heard the singing and rode up. He heard their story and said, "I think I can get you a boat." They crossed, and after a few more difficulties Ai-weh-deh delivered her charges into competent hands at Sian, and then promptly collapsed with typhus fever and sank into delirium for several days.
As her health gradually improved, she started a Christian church in Sian, and worked elsewhere, including a settlement for lepers in Szechuan, near the borders of Tibet. Her health was permanently impaired by injuries received during the war, and in 1947 she returned to England for a badly needed operation. She remained in England, preaching there.
In 1957, Alan Burgess wrote a book about her, The Small Woman. It was condensed in The Reader's Digest, and made into a movie called The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, starring Ingrid Bergman. When Newsweek magazine reviewed the movie, and summarized the plot, a reader, supposing the story to be fiction, wrote in to say, "In order for a movie to be good, the story should be believable!" Miss Gladys Aylward, the Small Woman, Ai-weh-deh, died 3 January 1970.
Lord, Teach Us to Work
One human life in all the Scriptures towers above the others. All who came before anticipated him, and all who follow after orient to him. And thanks to the biographical sketches found in the four Gospels of the New Testament, we know more details about Jesus’s everyday life than any other biblical figure. Moses and David, and Peter and Paul, who all both wrote much and had much written about them, are not unveiled with the same richness, depth, and detail as Christ. And for good reason. None compares to God himself dwelling among us in fully human soul and body. And no one accomplished the work that he accomplished. “The Gospels not only show us a man who worked, but also one who didn’t only work.” All four accounts are Gospels, driving toward his final week, his arrest, his trial, his death, the long pause of Holy Saturday, and then, at last, his resurrection. And so, as careful readers of the Gospels, we beware gathering up details about Jesus’s life and unhitching them from where his whole life was going. Still, we do have more to learn from the life of Christ than the events of his final week (which comprise less than half the Gospels). One theme, especially pronounced in the Gospel of John, is what we might see as the “work ethic” of Christ. Jesus Worked Observe, first, that Jesus did work — and consider what he meant by work rather than what we might assume. The night before he died, he prayed to his Father, as his men listened, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17:4). In a sense, his whole life had been a single work — a “life’s work” we might say. He had a calling and commission. His Father gave him work to do. And this was good — a blessing, not a curse. Jesus did not begrudge this work. Instead, he experienced a kind of satisfaction in doing the work his Father had assigned him. In fact, his soul fed on accomplishing his Father’s work, as he testified standing by the well in Samaria. “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (John 4:34). Jesus also speaks in John 9 about stewarding time in such a life. Here he sounds like Moses’s prayer to “teach us to number our days” (Psalm 90:12) and Paul’s exhortation to “[make] the best use of the time” (Ephesians 5:15–16). “Night is coming, when no one can work,” he says, and knowing that, “we must work the works of him who sent me while it is day” (John 9:4). He had an appointed season of earthly life. Eternity would come, but for now, he was on the clock. He had work to accomplish. “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9:5). He even “worked” on the Sabbath, or at least was accused of it. And he answered the charge not by saying he wasn’t working, but that “My Father is working until now, and I am working” (John 5:17). He Didn’t Only Work The Gospels not only show us a man who worked, but also one who didn’t only work. His life was more than his work. He rested and retreated, and called his weary disciples away to rest with him. When they had returned from their commission, and “told him all that they had done and taught” (and teaching, done well, can be really hard work), he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. (Mark 6:30–32) Jesus also slept. He may have stayed up all night to pray before choosing his twelve, and eschewed sleep to pray in the garden, but those were unusual circumstances. He slept in peace on a storm-tossed ship until his disciples frantically woke him, and as the great personal fulfillment of the Psalms, he did not despise Solomon’s wisdom in Psalm 127:2, It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep. What His Work Accomplished That Jesus worked (and didn’t only work) is plain enough, but what did his work mean? Much of what we have from the Gospels about his work is from his own mouth. First, he was conscious that his work bore witness to his Father. Indeed, his life-work was to glorify his Father, to make him known truly and admired duly (John 17:4, 6, 26). “Every indication we have of Jesus’s life and ministry is that he was (and was known as) a worker, not an idler.” And Jesus’s works demonstrated that the Father had sent him. “The works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me” (John 5:36; also John 10:25, 32). Not just that he was sent as a mere man. The way he taught (with authority, Matthew 7:29; Mark 1:22, 27; Luke 4:32; John 7:17), and the miracles he performed, pointed to his being more than a prophet — to the almost unspeakable truth that this is God himself. Even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father. (John 10:38) Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves. (John 14:10–11) His works, performed in the world with human words and hands, showed who he was, and whose he was — just as those who rejected him showed through their works who was their father (John 8:38–41). Industry Without Frenzy Every indication we have of Jesus’s life and ministry is that he was (and was known as) a worker, not an idler. Not only did he labor in obscurity as a tradesman for thirty years, supporting his family as the man of the house after the death of Joseph, but the tenor of his ministry was one of energy and industry, not laziness or lethargy. His life was not without weariness (John 4:6); nor was it without physical rest and spiritual retreat (Mark 6:31). He did not think of his work as his own but as his Father’s. And for the sake of the faith of the people his Father had given him, he expended the energy God gave him, day in and day out, to carry out his calling. We get the clear impression from the Gospels that he was busy. He was in great demand. His days were long. Yet we never get the sense that he was anxious or frenzied (even when a desperate father tries to whisk him away to save a dying daughter, Mark 5:22–36). His life was busy but not hurried. He knew his calling and gave himself to it. Not without sleep or leisure, but he didn’t live to rest. We Work for Good For those of us who claim him as Lord, it is sobering to realize that on multiple occasions Jesus calls us “laborers” (Matthew 20:1, 2, 8, 14). Not only did he say the gospel “laborer deserves his wages” (Luke 10:7; Matthew 10:10), but he instructed us, as his workmen, to pray for more: The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. (Matthew 9:37–38; Luke 10:2) Jesus calls us to work, to expend energy and effort, for the good of others. This is what makes our acts good works: that our work is good for others, not just self. “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). We Learn Humble Limits In Christ, we work, but we quickly learn, and happily acknowledge, the limits of our labors. We learn, with Peter, that Christ’s word is effective in a way that our work is not. “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets” (Luke 5:5). Our work in this world depends on his to be genuinely fruitful and of lasting value. In fact, in particular times and ways, our not working (as in justification by faith alone) is a way to accentuate Christ’s provision and work for us (Romans 4:5). There is a time to flee, in his grace, with our own feet for freedom from Egypt, and a time to stand back “and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. . . . The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent” (Exodus 14:13–14). Our work is fruit. His work is root. At bottom, we are like lilies of the field that “neither toil nor spin,” says Jesus, “yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these” (Matthew 6:28–29; Luke 12:27). “Jesus had a call and gave himself to it. Not without sleep or leisure, but he didn’t live to rest.” The foundation of Jesus’s work ethic as an example to us is the uniqueness of his work for us. The culmination of his work was his death and resurrection for sinners in a way we cannot imitate. There is a completed course (Luke 13:32), a unique finished work (John 19:30), an inimitable work we dare not seek to replace with our own. Christ does indeed call us to be laborers but not first and foremost. And when he does summon us into the fields, he invites us into a kind of rest: Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28–30) Don’t misunderstand. He doesn’t call us merely into rest. But into a kind of labor, in him, that is true rest — into a kind of rest in which we receive his yoke and burden, and yet they are easy and light. While he himself works so diligently, he is gentle toward us, and lowly in heart. So, the labor into which we enter, in his service, is humble work. We acknowledge and admit, however pioneering and enterprising our work may seem, that where it counts most, we are building on the work, and reaping the harvest, of others — first Christ himself, and also our fellows in him. “I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor,” he says to his disciples. “Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor” (John 4:38). In humility, we do not pretend to start kingdom work from scratch, claim it as our own, and make ourselves out to be the hero. Rather, God calls us to build upon the faithful labors of others. Our work is not a tribute to our greatness. In humility, we embrace the context into which God calls us, and do our level best to build, to take the next modest steps. How We Work Finally, what might the life and work of Christ teach us for how we are to work? First, we own that our working and Jesus’s giving (grace) are not at odds. We work because he is at work. “Whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God” (John 3:21), that is, in “the strength that God supplies” (1 Peter 4:11). Our works, yet carried out in the work of God. And we can hardly say enough about what it means for us, in Christ, to have his Holy Spirit. In fact, Jesus empowers us to do “greater works,” in some sense, than he did because he goes to his Father to send us his Spirit. “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12). Then, he teaches us to look to the reward, as he himself did (Hebrews 12:1–2). As the apostle Paul reminds us, in the context of “working hard,” Jesus himself said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). He not only said it, but lived it, and commends it. We learn to embrace the costs of hard work, looking past the friction and barriers in the moment, to the blessing to come. In His Work In Christ, we work — and we do so in his own energy. No one modeled this quite like Paul. Or spoke about it as often as Paul. There is a strength in Christ in which he calls us to work. Christ himself was the source of Paul’s own strength: “I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord” (1 Timothy 1:12). So, Paul writes to his protégé, “My child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:1). And to the Ephesians, “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might” (Ephesians 6:10). And to the Philippians he testifies, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). Not just a strength in Christ but a strength of Christ. Jesus, the God-man, gives his own divine-human energy by his Spirit to empower our work. When Paul toils, as he says in Colossians 1:29, he is “struggling with all [Christ’s] energy that he powerfully works within me.” So, in Christ, and for him, and by him, we work, and do so in a strength that Christ himself provides. For justification before God, we lay down our efforts, and in the everyday Christian life, we take up the energy of the God-man himself and we walk. Because “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). Article by David Mathis
