Living By Faith Blog

A Tragic Loss

Hudson Taylor and his wife were missionaries to inland China in the 1800’s.  But while he was there his wife became sick, and died.

This was a tragic, heart-breaking loss.

But God deeply comforted him, as we can see from two letters he wrote soon after her passing.

From the First Letter

“Many, many thanks for your loving sympathy in my bereavement ...


“I do from day to day and every day so delight in the love of Jesus, satisfy my thirsty heart when most desolate from His fullness, feed and rest in green pastures in the recognition that His will has been done and is being done, as no words can express.

“He only knows what her absence is to me.  Twelve and a half years of such unbroken spiritual fellowship, united labor, mutual satisfaction and love, fall to the lot of very few … but were [the loss] less, I should know less of His power and sustaining love.”

From the Second Letter:

“No language can express what He has been and is to me.  Never does He leave me; constantly does He cheer me with His love.  He who once wept at the grave of Lazarus often now weeps in and with me …

“Often I find myself wondering whether it is possible for her, who is taken, to have more joy in His presence than He has given me.  If He has taken her to heaven, He has also brought heaven here to me, for He is heaven …

“At times He does [allow] me to realize all that was, but is not now …  And then He who will soon come and wipe away every tear comes and takes all bitterness from them and fills my heart with deep, true, unutterable gladness.”

(From Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission: The Growth of a Work of God, Vol 2, pp.208ff.  Italics his.)

Some Observations

God does not work in exactly the same way with each of His children.

But still, Hudson Taylor’s experience can help us understand some of the ways God can comfort us.

So how did God comfort Hudson Taylor?

God made His presence so real to him that he was completely filled and satisfied in God Himself —

Often I find myself wondering whether it is possible for her, who is taken, to have more joy in His presence than He has given me.

God also sorrowed with Hudson in his loss.  God’s comfort did not stop Hudson from sorrowing.  But God enabled Hudson to feel that God was sharing with him in his sorrow —

He who once wept at the grave of Lazarus often now weeps in and with me.

But sorrow can lead to bitterness.  So when that started to happen,  God filled Hudson with the joy of His all-satisfying presence —

At times He does [allow] me to realize all that was, but is not now …  And then He who will soon come and wipe away every tear comes and takes all bitterness from them and fills my heart with deep, true, unutterable gladness.

As a result Hudson Taylor did not begrudge God for taking his wife.  Quite the contrary —

He only knows what her absence is to me.  Twelve and a half years of such unbroken spiritual fellowship, united labor, mutual satisfaction and love, fall to the lot of very few … but were [the loss] less, I should know less of His power and sustaining love.

He deeply felt the loss of his wife.  But he saw that God was using that loss to give him even more of God’s power and sustaining love.

His experience is a real-life illustration of how God can comfort us in our losses, and that He does this both by sorrowing with us, and by satisfying us with His presence.

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