Read: 2 Corinthians 4:1-18
There is only one missionary, to my knowledge, who has so turned the world upside down that she has earned a place on the back of a Scottish £10 note. Whoever it is, everyone acknowledges that Mary Mitchell Slessor, was a missionary of missionaries, and a Christian of Christians.
Mary Slessor was born in 1848 in Aberdeen, and died in 1915 in what is now known as Nigeria. At a young age, she moved to Dundee with her family, where at the age of 11, she was sent to work in a textile factory. As she grew older, her regular hours of work were Six A.M. to Six P.M. She was a curious and intelligent girl, and would often take a book to work with her and lay it out on the machine she was working on so she could read it whilst weaving.
Converted during these years, she became a member of the United Presbyterian Church (the denomination which built the St. Vincent Street Church). From the first glimmerings of her Christian life, she was busy about her master’s business. She ran Sunday Schools and evangelistic outreaches. She was also engrossed by the tales of missionaries from Calabar, what is now known as Nigeria. So much so, that at the age of 28, having applied to the Mission Board of the United Presbyterian Church, she was sent out as a missionary to Calabar.
It is difficult to underestimate the savagery of the people she went to minister to. Inter-tribal slavery was everywhere practiced, as was the killing of twin children. On the death of a chieftain, up to 65 members of his tribe would be executed to accompany him to the afterlife. These, and a host of other disgusting practices, were rife when Mary Slessor arrived up river in Nigeria. She quickly settled into village life and became, over the years, a respected figure among the feuding tribes. They called her, “Ma” and soon became the arbiter in all disputes. She ran a children’s home where twins who were to be killed were fostered and adopted. Over the 39 years of her ministry, hundreds of children were saved. She was a very effective missionary and founded Churches and Schools wherever she went. Violent tribal practices were stopped and chieftains became Christians.
She was never a well woman, and was constantly afflicted with fevers – malaria I suppose. Despite her poor health, she soldiered on. She became a civilizing, Christianising source to Nigeria and received government recognition for her benevolence and authority. Through her ministry, hundreds became Christians – and it is difficult to underestimate how many millions are being indirectly affected by her ministry in Nigeria today. She was depressive and often endured what she called ‘dark times’. In January 1915, she died of fever and was buried in Duke Town. She, above every other missionary I have studied, embodied the ‘treasure in jars of clay’ mentality of the Apostle Paul. She wrote of herself, “I’m lame and feeble and foolish; the wrinkles are wonderful – no concertina is so wonderfully folded and convulated. I’m a wee, wee wifie, verra little buikit – but I grip on well, none the less.” Oh for more of the Mary Slessor among us! One of her sayings, which strikes a convicting chord with me, is, “God can’t give His best until we have given ours!”
There are three lessons I want to draw for you from the life of this greatest of missionaries: first, her absolute devotion to prayer; secondly, the immediacy of her prayer life and thirdly, the familiarity of her prayer life.
[A] Her Absolute Devotion to Prayer
Victorian Dundee was a fearsome place of toil and industry. We have already said that Slessor worked from 6 in the morning to 6 at night every day. And yet, in the midst of such a tiresome life, she always found time for the meetings of the church. This is a challenge to us in our day of busy-ness, when the most common excuse used for not being at the prayer meeting is, “I’m too busy”. Her biographer writes, “despite the weary hours in the factory, and a long walk to and from the church, she was never absent from any of the services or meetings. ‘We would as son have thought of going to the moon as of being absent from a service’, she wrote shortly before she died. “And we throve very well on it. How often, when lying awake at night, my time for thinking, do I go back to those wonderful days!’” She was not indefatigable – she grew tired –and yet she would not sooner have thought of going to the moon as being absent from a service. She saw it as her act of reasonable service to the Lord and she saw it as being the place where her batteries were recharged. Her seriousness towards prayer marked out not just her early Christian life, but her later ministry in Calabar. What she was at home, she was on the mission field.
We do live in changed days! Trying to get folk to the prayer meeting is as bold a request as trying to get them to hand over their life savings to you. How different an attitude from the early church, where men like Eutychus fell asleep at night and tumbled to his death, most likely because he was a slave and had been working hard all day. Or again, the love feasts of Corinth, which were becoming orgies and food-fests of the rich and fat, whilst the slaves, who were tied up at work all day, were being ignored. One’s mind wanders back to the sleeping disciples of Jesus at Gethsemane and to the words of our Lord when He said to them in Matthew 26:40 – “could you men not keep watch with me for one hour.”
[B] The Immediacy of Her Prayer Life
Mary Slessor had the most interesting of prayer lives. Her biographer doesn’t, in my opinion, do it justice, but there are three aspects of the immediacy of her prayer life I briefly want to draw attention to:
1. The Commitment of the Mundane to the Lord – in Philippians 4:6 we read, “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” The point is this – if there is something which is big enough or small enough to worry you, its big enough or small enough to commit to the Lord in prayer. One night, being on furlough in Scotland and returning from a meeting, she lost her spectacles in the dark. Snow lay on the ground and there seemed little hope of recovering them. She could not do without them and she prayed simply and directly,: “O Father, give me back my spectacles.” Early next morning the milk-boy saw something glistening in the snow and she had the spectacles in time to read her Bible.
2. The Commitment of the Painful to the Lord – the most beautiful of roses grows in the most unpromising of ground. Mary Slessor’s father was a violent alcoholic. Her biographer writes that when she was a girl in Dundee, “there was one night of terror in every week”. He was a vicious and violent man when he had a drink in him. What was the secret of the patience of her and her mother? We read that ‘they prayed to quieten their hearts’. Later on we read, “the fact that the family was never disgraced in public was attributed to prayer.” I’m sure they wouldn’t have shared their burden with anyone outside the family – it was too close and too painful – but they shared it with the Lord. I’m glad that most of us here were brought up in Christian families where the scourge of alcoholism was absent, but nevertheless, the principle is good. When we’ve got nowhere else to turn – because life is so painful and our pain is so personal – we turn to the Lord. That’s what the Psalmist constantly did – ‘whom have I in heaven high but you, O Lord’ – said Asaph in Psalm 73.
3. The Immediate Commitment of All Things to the Lord – on the mission field, Mary Slessor was constantly on the move – constantly under pressure to save the lives of those condemned to death under the harsh primitive religion of the people she was ministering to. We read of a situation where, to establish guilt, the parties suspected of committing a crime, would eat a poison bean – and if they died, it showed that they were guilty. Slessor was at an end of herself to know what to do, and so we read that ‘now with passionate entreaty she beseeched God for guidance and help in the struggle that was to come. When she rose from her knees her fear had vanished and she was tranquil and confident.’ She was able to defuse the situation by facing down the chiefs and she saved the men’s lives. How like Nehemiah, when in Nehemiah 2:4 the King said to him, “what is it that you want”, and we read that Nehemiah prayed to the God of heaven. It’s an arrow prayer – a prayer for immediate help to the Lord. Mary Slessor had, every day, a quiver full of arrow prayers. This same immediacy of prayer is open to us – when we are confronted by a difficult situation at work, or by a difficult interview or anything else, we can immediately pray about the situation and find peace, comfort and the God who answers all our prayers ready to hear and answer us.
[C] The Familiarity of Her Prayer Life
Mary Slessor had a beautiful intimacy with God. Her biographer records that she “spoke to him as a child to her Father … He was so real to her, so near, that her words were almost of the nature of conversation”. On one occasion after a tiresome journey, she sat down to her dinner and was heard to pray, “Thank ye, Faither – ye ken I’m tired.” When asked when she was so intimate with God, Slessor replied, “when I am out there in the bush I have often no other one to speak to but my Father and I just talk to Him.” The Jesus whom we follow and model ourselves on oft addressed God as ‘Abba’ – not daddy, but certainly a term of affectionate endearment. I wonder sometimes whether we so complicate our prayers as to forget that prayer is to be the simplest language of a quiet and humble heart. We need to be real with God – as real with Him as He is real to us. In our prayer times here, yes there must be an acknowledgement of the majesty and sovereignty of God, but can there not also be the petitions of children to their Faither?
And so, for me, Mary Slessor is the missionary of missionaries. She changed Nigeria for the better – and that through prayer and sheer hard work. Indeed, she often mused that prayer was harder work than physical effort. My question for all of us tonight as we take some lessons from this Scottish heroine is – are we willing to put our shoulders to the plough and pray for the Kingdom of God to flood in upon us in Glasgow such that they shall say of us, “these men who have turned the world upside down have come here also.” AMEN
