A Thousand-Fold Harvest

Multiplied millions of dollars have poured into overseas missions under the banner of Lottie Moon, the Southern Baptist whose name is used to promote that denomination’s annual missionary offering.
But who was Lottie Moon, and what did she do?
Lottie (short for Charlotte) was born in 1840 and grew up in an old Virginia family. Her father’s plantation house, Viewmont, overlooked the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her mother, a staunch Christian, read to her from the Bible, and as a girl Lottie developed a love for Scripture and for missionary biography. Since there was no church nearby, Mrs. Moon conducted services herself every Sunday for family, neighbors, and servants.
Lottie excelled in school and became one of the first Southern women to earn a Master’s Degree, all the while pondering what to do with her life. In the spring of 1873, Lottie, age thirty-three, heard a sermon on John 4:35: Do you not say, “There are still four months and then comes the harvest?” Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest!
As the preacher spoke of the whitened fields, Lottie made up her mind then and there to become a missionary to China. By autumn, she was on her way. When her ship was caught in a terrific storm and appeared to be sinking, she wrote: As I watched the mad waste of waters, howling as if eager to engulf us, I think I should scarcely have been surprised to see a Divine Form walking upon them, so sweetly I heard in my inmost soul the consoling words, “It is I, be not afraid.”
For forty years, Lottie Moon worked unafraid in North China, serving faithfully amid storms of war, disease, poverty, and plague. When, in her early seventies, a terrible famine swept China, she gave her food and her last dollar for famine relief. She grew so frail and undernourished, the doctor ordered her home. She died en route on Christmas Eve, 1912.
“I would that I had a thousand lives that I might give them to the women of China,” she said.
She gave her one life, and it has been multiplied a thousandfold.
In a sense, the same is true for us all. As we go about doing good, serving Christ and our world, we’re doing more than we know. The Lord multiplies our efforts. As the old song says: “Little is much if God is in it.”
Only in heaven will the thousand-fold harvests be seen.