A Precious Pillow
Adoniram Judson was America’s first missionary to an overseas nation. He gave almost 40 years of his life to the people of Burma (1813 – 1850) and provided them with their first and to this day, only translation of the Old and New Testament in their own language. But his life and his work were almost cut short over and over.
He had just completed translating the New Testament into Burmese, (nine painstaking years work), when his home was attacked by soldiers and he was hauled off to the nation’s most notorious “death” prison. The guards were the dreaded ‘Spotted Faces,’ named for the tattoos on their cheeks outlining their crimes against the nation. Many were executed but some escaped death if they agreed to be prison guards. They were brutal to foreigners.
Left alone, Adoniram’s faithful wife, Ann, gathered her husband’s New Testament manuscripts and quickly buried them in the garden. Soon realising this would rot the papers she dug them up and sewed them into the lining of a filthy old pillow. Some time later she was allowed to bring the pillow to her husband. Though weak and emaciated, he guarded the pillow with his life.
Without warning he was moved in the early hours one morning and despite his pleading, the pillow had to be left behind. His last sight of it was on the floor of his prison hut as the ‘Spotted Faces’ smashed in the walls and ceiling. The pillow lay under the pile of broken bamboo and timber.
Adoniram was not to know but one of his Burmese converts had gone to the prison to look for some token to remember his faithful leader by. All he found was the filthy old pillow. He knew it was Adoniram’s, took it home, and to his surprise and amazement, found the translation.
In time God would not only release his servant from prison but restore him to complete translating the entire Bible into Burmese.
If God protects the Scriptures with such great care, we should read it with enough diligence to discover why.
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