Monday, December 10, 2018
John 9:4 As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.
WORK WHILE IT IS DAY
Our sister church, the Church of the Lutheran Confession in India (CLCI), began its work in the Guntur area of India and is still centered there. So the work of Adam D. Rowe is of special interest to us.
Being from the Synodical Conference background we are less familiar with the Lutheran missionaries from other synods in the USA. Rowe served under the General Synod back in the 1870s and 80s in India in the Guntur area. After thirty-six days of fevered sickness, the Lord called him home. In an article by Prof. Clutz in Wolff's "Missionary Heroes of the Lutheran Church" there is the following on Rowe's departure at a relatively young age, leaving a wife and young daughter.
Rowe literally threw himself tirelessly into the work. "The death of this fine young man seemed then, and it might still seem almost like an uncalled for sacrifice. It might seem as if he ought to have spared himself more in the work, and that this would have been better. But we do not know. He did a great, grand work in his brief life of just a few days beyond thirty-four years ... Through all the years it has been a joyous inspiration to all who labored with him ... and it will be a bright example to all who shall follow him. It was a work that might have fully occupied, and would have worthily crowned a long life. Certainly this is better, a thousand times better, than an easy, listless, useless life, such as is led my many men. Who that has any worthy conception of life and its responsibilities would not rather be the lordly battleship that goes down in the midst of the fight, riddled with shot and shell, after but a few years of active service, than to be the lazy, dismantled hulk that lies unused, rocking and rotting in some quiet harbor, even though the latter may remain afloat ten times as long as the former?
"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial;
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best."
