Hudson Taylor - The Call to Service

*Note: If you have time (which you do if you're reading this) read Hudson Taylor's "The Call to Service". It's the second chapter of Hudson Taylor's autobiography A Retrospect. Actually, read the whole book! I plan on reading it soon, and when I do, I'll post a summary/reflection on it and link it here.

I read Hudson Taylor’s “The Call to Service” about a week ago, and I promised to reflect on how I might “be so ready for [Jesus when he comes again] as to be able, whenever He might appear, to give an account of [my] stewardship with joy, and not with grief”. One particular thing that stood out to me last week was how Hudson Taylor went and donated a bunch of his books and clothing… that his retention of those things would be a “loss of blessing”. 

I figured that after a time of thinking and reflecting on this, I might do something similar… give away some books and maybe even see about organizing a clothing drive at Caltech. Instead, three days into my stay with my grandparents (yay – Spring Break!), I’ve already ended up accumulating about two dozen more books, DVDs, and CDs. The first night here I told my Grandma about a book I read this past week, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus (again, hurray for Spring Break!!), and how good I thought it was. And lo and behold, Grandma had it! She told me if I liked that book, I really should read The Grand Weaver by Ravi Zacharias. Later that night, I mentioned that I was making my way through R.C. Sproul’s series of short booklets (all free on kindle ^_^ and hurray again for Spring Break!), and my Grandma said she really liked him (though not as much as she likes Ravi) and that she has some things by R.C. Sproul so why don’t I take a look at her things. Well, it turns out that she has dozens of Sproul’s CDs and books, and while going through and choosing a few that I felt were immediately useful to myself or would really speak to people in my life (I haven’t been able to give a really adequate response to my old roommate’s questions about God’s sovereignty and humanity’s free will and how those can both be possible so I picked up a CD series on that; an international student moved into my hallway this term, saw my cross necklace, and asked me about the “difference between Catholicism and Christianity”, to which I was also unable to adequately respond so I picked up an explanation on that too; I had coffee with someone two weekends ago and somehow we started talking about suffering and God, so I picked up a DVD lecture on that too – I’m not sure if we’ll get a second coffee (that’s not a normal date conversation, right?) but I’ll be [more] prepared next time!), I was reminded of my conviction over the course of the last couple months to pray more… and more effectively. I told my Grandma about this, and she assured me that we would be able to find some good books on that. So, the next morning, we went through all her bookshelves and located probably close to 30 books on the subject. She and my Dad looked through them all and decided on about a dozen that were “excellent”, “life-changing”, or “necessary”.

So now, a day later and a day wiser, I’ve decided that maybe I’m not in a stage of life right now to be donating a lot of books (though I will have to see about that clothing drive…), but I was able to help my Grandma bless me (haha, that sounds so backwards) and hopefully by reading those books and listening to those CDs (I do have a 1100+ mile car trip back to LA – yay Spring Break!!) I’ll get to be a blessing to those around me. My hope is that by spending my Spring Break reading and listening to God’s Word and related topics, I’ll be better equipped to share my faith and be more able to at least give an account of the next week and a half.