baubles

Taken from a friends blog as they leave South America to go to the States for a few months.

Listen to this conversation between George Müller (famous for fully relying on God’s daily provision for the thousands of orphans he would care for in his orphanages) and his new wife, Mary. They had been married for one week and she had happily finished unpacking in his house, getting it all set up when he came home from traveling that day, sharing the gospel. She was excited to show her new husband the fruit of her labor. Here is what happened next:

As George looked around the room, his heart sank. His house was beginning to look like so many other houses he had visited- cluttered with things: things that would stop him from answering God’s call on his life, things that would have to be packed up and transported from one place to another, things that would mock his attempt to live only for God.

He sank wearily into his chair. “They have to go,” he said in a low voice.

“What has to go?” frowned Mary.

“Everything,” replied George, waving his hand vaguely around the room, “The silver, the china, the tapestries. Everything that’s not necessary has to go.”

“But why?” stammered Mary, turning pale and sinking into a chair.

“Because,” said George, “I travel from one end of Devon to the other preaching that the Bible is to be taken literally, and I come home at night to a home filled with baubles. After all, Jesus said, ‘Sell all you have and give to the poor,’ didn’t He?” (1)

* * *

Here’s the amazing part,

The next evening when George came home, the silverware, china, and tapestries were all gone. Sitting on the china cabinet in their place was a stack of pound notes. Mary pointed to them. “Do what you think best with it, George, and may God help us both,” she said. (2)

. Yet she gave it all to be obedient to Christ! By the way, what a beautiful picture of a wife submitting to her husband, too! Wow!

(1) George Müller: The Guardian of Bristol’s Orphans, Janet and Geoff Benge (Christian Heroes: Then & Now), p.77 & 78