In 1956, biologists put a band on a Laysan albatross at Midway Atoll. She was already about five years old. They named her Wisdom. Most birds of her kind live somewhere between 12 and 40 years. In late 2024, Wisdom was spotted with a new partner tending a brand new egg. She was about 74. She’s thought to have raised more than 30 chicks and outlived at least three mates. One biologist said nobody knows of another bird even close to her age, and every year they wait with bated breath for her return. Getting older doesn’t mean God’s done with you. Keep showing up. Keep being faithful. There may be more fruit ahead than you think.
Shortly before 1 a.m. on February 3, 1943, a German submarine torpedoed the Army transport ship Dorchester in the icy North Atlantic, with 902 men aboard. In less than 20 minutes it would sink. In the chaos, four Army chaplains, a Methodist minister, a Jewish rabbi, a Catholic priest, and a Dutch Reformed minister, moved among the men, calming them, praying, and handing out life jackets. When the life jackets ran out, all four took off their own and gave them to four frightened young men. One survivor called it “the finest thing I have seen or hope to see this side of heaven.” As the ship went down, men in the rafts saw the four chaplains with arms linked, praying together.
Polycarp was an old man, the bishop of Smyrna, and tradition says he had been taught by the apostle John. Sometime in the second century, Roman authorities came to arrest him. He could have run, but he said, “The will of God be done.” When the officers arrived, he ordered food and drink set out for them and asked for an hour to pray. He prayed for two hours. In the stadium, the proconsul urged him to swear by Caesar, curse Christ, and go free. Polycarp answered, “Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury: how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?” He was burned at the stake.
When Fanny Crosby was only six weeks old, a man posing as a doctor treated an illness by putting hot mustard poultices on her eyes, and the treatment left her blind for life. She could have grown up bitter. Instead she became one of the most loved hymn writers in history, writing more than 9,000 hymns, including “Blessed Assurance,” “To God Be the Glory,” and “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior.” One well-meaning preacher told her it was a great pity the Master hadn’t given her sight. She said that if she could have made one request at birth, it would have been to be born blind. Why? “Because when I get to heaven, the first face that shall ever gladden my sight will be that of my Savior.”
William Carey was an English shoemaker’s apprentice who became convinced that the church should be taking the gospel to the whole world. In 1792 he helped organize a missionary society and preached a sermon with the call, “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God!” Within a year he and his family were on a ship to India. The early years were miserable. Money ran short and the work was hard. He labored seven years before baptizing his first convert, Krishna Pal, in December 1800. He kept going. Over the next 28 years he and his helpers translated the whole Bible into six of India’s major languages and parts of it into more than 200 others. He spent 41 years in India without a furlough.
