It’s not here yet, but it’s coming. I read this poem tonight and thought it expressed so beautifully the idea that enduring in hope is something God has encouraged us to do in His providential works of creation.

Photo by Anna Friedrich

The leaves are fading and falling,
The winds are rough and wild,
The birds have ceased their calling,
But let me tell you, my child,

Though day by day, as it closes,
Doth darker and colder grow,
The roots of the bright red roses
Will keep alive in the snow.

And when the winter is over,
The boughs will get new leaves,
The quail come back to the clover,
And the swallow back to the eaves.

The robin will wear on his bosom
A vest that is bright and new,
And the loveliest wayside blossom
Will shine with the sun and dew.

The leaves to-day are whirling,
The brooks are all dry and dumb,
But let me tell you, my darling,
The spring will be sure to come.

There must be rough, cold weather,
And winds and rains so wild;
Not all good things together
Come to us here, my child.

So, when some dear joy loses
Its beauteous summer glow,
Think how the roots of the roses
Are kept alive in the snow.

~Alice and Phoebe Cary

This is the last of my presentation to the OPC ladies. Nancy Wilson recently wrote about the importance of serving those nearby, and Anne Steele’s life was a wonderful example of this.

In a little town called Broughton in southern England, not far from where some of Jane Austen’s novels are set, Anne Steele was born in 1717, during the reign of the first King George of England, and she died during the reign of the third King George, the one who declared war on the American colonies in 1775. Anne came from a family of Dissenters and belonged to a group called Particular Baptists.

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The next segment of my talk to the OPC ladies on October 3:

“If we had no Winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; If we did not sometimes taste the adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.”

Those words were written by Anne Bradstreet. We know of her today because she was the first published American poet. She was also a Puritan. The term “puritanical” is now used as nasty name hurled at anyone who dares to suggest that there is a cultural standard of righteousness that ought to observed. While the common use of this term shows a grave misunderstanding of who the Puritans were and how they lived, it is also accurate when not leveled as namecalling. The Puritans lived in a culture where everyone who bore that label agreed that there was a standard of righteousness that ought to be obeyed: God’s standard. It’s not a bad thing to be puritanical if that’s the sense in which the word is used. As Shakespeare said, “Why, the puritans hold no such points as you lay to their charge.”

One of the biggest misunderstandings about the Puritans is the view of how they viewed women. It is parroted that the poor females of the 16th and 17th century Puritan society were downtrodden doormats who existed solely for fulfilling the whims of the overbearing males who controlled every aspect of their pitiful existence. Thankfully, we have the example of Anne Bradstreet to dispel this foolish notion.

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It’s so hard to imagine what it was like to live in other times, isn’t it? If you’re like me you enjoy watching period movies which show a slice of life from days gone by: what people wore, how they talked, what strange foods they ate. If it has something to do with Jane Austen, even better! (Jane started each day with a cup of hot cocoa, a woman after my own heart.) If we only look at the surface, it seems like people “then” were very different than we are. But if we dig a little deeper we find out that people from long ago had the same kind of troubles we do today. Then we begin to realize that we are not alone in our trials, and we can look to godly examples in stories and in real life to remind us how to face our troubles today and how to conquer sin.

Remember the Elisabeth Elliot quote from the beginning of the biography about Elizabeth Prentiss? She said that studying lives of godly people encouraged her to believe that “true discipleship is possible not only for the great figures of the Bible, but for us ordinary folks as well.” Well, when I was a new Christian, I distinctly recall having an epiphany, an “aha!” moment, when I was reading my Bible and realized that ALL of it applied to me, not just to the Super Saints. Those commands were directed to me! “Be ye holy as I am holy.” Yep, that one, too. That was both exciting and scary to ponder. As we briefly look at the lives of some more godly women from the past, think about the fact that they were women like YOU, and though their circumstances may be different from yours, their faith was the same faith you proclaim today, and they worshipped the same God. And the same God gives you the same strength to face the circumstances He ordains for your life today.
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This is another vignette I presented in my talk to the OPC ladies at their retreat.

Now we will travel back in time a couple hundred years before Elizabeth Prentiss, and hop over the stormy Atlantic to the rough and rocky land of Scotland. The famous Scottish reformer John Knox had fled to Geneva to escape persecution and to learn at the feet of John Calvin, and after his return the church in Scotland began writing covenants in order to promote Reformation in their country and help the Protestants become better rooted. But when James VI of Scotland became King James I in England (you may have heard of him as his name appears on a lot of Bibles), there was a dispute between the High Church Episcopalians of England and the Presbyterians of Scotland. The archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, was determined to force those hard-headed Scots to submit to Episcopal rule. Laud got the king to command that the new Book of Common Prayer, which was known in Scotland as Laud’s Liturgy, be read in the Scottish Churches. At St. Giles Cathedral in July 1637, when the Dean of Edinburgh began to read the liturgy, it’s said that a woman named Jenny Geddes was sitting there on a wooden stool, and she became so incensed that she threw her stool at the dean’s head! This started a revolt in the church with others joining in the melée that became known as The Casting of the Stules. Jenny was supposed to have shouted (using a thick Scottish brogue): “The deevil give a colic to your stomach! Out you false thief! Dare you say the mass at my ear?” This bold revolt against the government of England mandating the form of worship in Scottish churches grew, until many Scottish noblemen signed a National Covenant, and those who agreed with its precepts — opposing the Episcopal rule of the church in Scotland — became known as Covenanters.

Some of the story about Jenny Geddes may be folk lore, but there was a spark lit in Scotland, eventually inspiring the English Civil War with Puritan Oliver Cromwell fighting against the tyranny of absolute monarchy, which battle continued on to the shores of our continent with the War for Independence. That war was dubbed by some as the Presbyterian parson’s rebellion, with the cry “No King but Jesus!” Many fled England and Scotland and Ireland in the 17th century to come to America for the sake of conscience and to find religious freedom. We celebrate the courage of some of those people every November with our Thanksgiving feasts.

The Puritan cause in both England and Scotland suffered a great blow with the death of Oliver Cromwell and the restoration of Charles II to the throne. The suffering of the Scottish Covenanters increased greatly in the 1660s. They were hunted down and savagely persecuted for their refusal to grant headship of the church of God to the king of England. As far as the Covenanters were concerned, only Jesus is Lord and head of the church. Because these people were law-abiding and not advocating rebellion against governing authorities, the ploy used to harass them was to ask them if they “owned the king’s authority.” If they disowned it, they were condemned, and if they qualified it by making a distinction between church and state or refused to give an answer to that trick question, they were also guilty of treason and put to death.

That was the dilemma of the women known as the two Margarets. “God save the king,” was all they needed to say to save themselves. But to them that would be giving man the honor due only to the Lord’s anointed. The older woman was Margaret MacLachlan, 70 years old. She was a widow who was known for her godliness and well-loved by her fellow-Christians. There is not much more we know about her…she did not write any books, she did not have her own radio program, she did not leave any other legacy than her dying example of faithfulness to God.

Margaret Wilson was over half a century younger than the elder Margaret, just 18 years old. She and her younger brother and sister were faithful Christians during a time of intense persecution. Children of a wealthy farmer, they had to leave their comfortable home and hide in the mountains, living in bogs and caves, during the Killing Times of 1685 when all Covenanters were under sentence of death and hunted like animals. One winter day, Margaret and her 13-year-old sister, Agnes, came down from the mountains to secretly visit friends. Someone there asked them to drink the king’s health, which they refused to do as it was not warranted by Scripture. So they were caught and put in prison for two months, when, along with Margaret Wilson, they were tried and sentenced, both Margarets to die by drowning, and young Agnes released on a bond of 100 pounds to her father.

The Martyr of Solway by John Everett Millais

You can read an account of their death here.

The elderly Margaret endured unjust suffering after a life of faithful service to her Lord, and the younger Margaret missed out on the joys of marriage and children, yet they both exhibited such a joyful willingness to enter into heaven. Not only that, but consider the unwavering stand they took for righteousness, not budging on something which to us may seem trivial, yet their convictions were so strong, they would not put any one above God, no matter what the cost. It makes me wonder what things I might be compromising on, the sins I excuse as being too small to bother with. Is there a bitterness I indulge because I have been wronged by someone? Think of how wronged those two Margarets were! Is there a comfort I covet because I see others enjoying what I do not have? Think of young Margaret Wilson sleeping in caves in the mountains when she was hunted by the King’s men, solely for refusing to pay homage to a man when she believed homage was only due to God. Are there there times I put myself ahead of God, when I neglect to meditate on His Word and spend time praying to Him? Think of the hymns and prayers and brave words on young Margaret’s lips just before she was thrown the last time into the waters, to enter into glory. I hope that I have those triumphant words on my lips, not words of complaining and sorrow, when it’s my time to meet the Lord. The little we know about these godly women centers on their deaths, but we can see from this small picture what great faith they had. Their deaths can encourage us to live lives of greater trust in God.