This is the story of the escape of two of the last of the China Inland Mission’s missionaries, Arthur and Wilda Mathews, from Communist China, along with their young daughter, Lilah. (All three were in the last 5 to leave,Wilda and Lilah were allowed to leave before Arthur was.)
This was a great book to read – Isobel Kuhn, the author, was also a missionary with CIM, so she was really involved with praying for their safe exit. She also had access to them, their papers, and a knowledge of the culture that they were reaching and some of the different effects that the communist government had on the missionaries.
I think that the best thing about this book was the fact that their struggles were not minimised. The Mathews had a lot of struggles, and the temptation with many modern Christian books is to minimise the difficulties and maximise the triumphs. This book doesn’t do that – it’s very honest, and I really liked that. It’s important to know that the Christian life is not an endless sea of triumphs and contentment and ease, even (indeed, especially) for missionaries.
So this was a great book on missionaries in China and the CIM.
No comments:
Post a Comment