The man sat intent, his brow furrowed. On a small table nearby was a Bible and a volume of Acts and Monuments (Foxe’s Book of Martyrs). A leaf of paper lay on the table before him, illuminated by a shaft of light from the single, barred window. He was surrounded by thick stone walls. He glanced thoughtfully at the door, thick and cross-plated. It was heavily barred, from the outside. His eyes dropped again to the paper, glowing in the single shaft of light. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then with a firm hand, he dipped his quill into the inkwell and raised it. Lowering the tip to the paper, he wrote, As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where there was a den; And I laid me down in that place to sleep: And as I slept I dreamed a dream.
The man paused and narrowed his eyes, looking down at the sentence. Then he nodded. Dipping his pen again, he shifted the paper to keep it in the beam of light and wrote again, with more confidence this time. I dreamed, and behold I saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a Book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back.
He dipped his pen again, writing with haste now. I looked, and saw him open the Book, and read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled: and not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry; saying, what shall I do?
And so, in that prison cell, on that day, was born one of the greatest books in the English language. This book was being written by a mender of household goods, a “hedge preacher.” He dubbed the book, The Pilgrim’s progress from this world to that which is to come: delivered under the similitude of a dream where it is discovered the manner of setting out, his dangerous journey and safe arrival at the desired country.
Today we just call it Pilgrim’s Progress. It would go on to become one of the most famous books in the English language. But initially, the author didn’t even know if he should publish it. He asked his friends. Some said, “yes.” Many said, “no,” claiming it treated spiritual truths in too common a manner, which to them, seemed disrespectful. I’m sure to those raised in the churches and cathedrals of the church of England, with the robed priests and their solemn, measured, and gilded worship forms, a book written in the common speech of the street worker did seem that way.
Finally, he decided because he couldn’t get a unified answer, he would go ahead with it. He published it in 1678. Of course, it was rejected by the high and mighty and the intellectual elites of his day.
It was printed on rough, poor quality paper and sold cheaply on the streets. It didn’t matter. It sold. It sold, sold, sold. It sold more than 100,000 copies in England of that day, outselling by a healthy margin any other book besides the Bible. The common people loved it.
It would continue to grow. The American colonies had an edition in 1681, only three years after it first appeared in England. It became very famous there and I’ve heard it said that if you went into a log cabin on the American frontier and they were privileged enough to own three books, those books would have been the Bible, Plutarch’s Lives (an ancient history book) and Pilgrim’s Progress.
It was published in Dutch in 1681. Twenty-two years later it was published in German and in Swedish 24 years later in 1727. That was only the beginning. It would go on to be translated into over 200 languages and has never been out of print since first published 347 years ago.
It has been called the first novel written in English. Its effect on other literature has been simply astounding. Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, C.S. Lewis, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Sir Walter Scott, and others have drawn inspiration from it.
While we can be amazed today at the reach and power of this old book, we have to remember that he wrote it in prison, leaving behind an impoverished wife and family, including a favorite daughter who was blind from birth.
We can be thankful that John Bunyan went to prison. I’m sure his wife and children were not.
But he might never have written it if he wasn’t confined. Outside he was busy “hedge preaching.”
But forced to sit in a stone dungeon with nothing to do, he wrote, and the world was never the same.
Let’s turn a corner a moment and come up to this century.
Mary was lying in bed, the community invalid. She couldn’t witness, she couldn’t teach Sunday school, take a meal to that new mother, or even go to church.
As she plucked at the tassels of her church-donated comforter, what was she tempted with? I’m just a burden. People have enough to do without taking care of me yet. I can’t do anything for the Lord. Those busy taking care of their own families have to leave what they are doing and take turns caring for me. What can I do? She dropped the tassel and looked at it lying limp and crumpled on the quilted square. Useless. Just a burden.
****
The preacher is preaching his heart out. He has a burden. He looks out over the congregation. Especially at the back corner where there are a few young and not-so-young. They sit wooden faced. Unresponsive. Dead. Cold.
That night as he kneels by his borrowed bed and pours his heart out, he sees no way forward. What could touch these souls?
****
“Is something going on?” Mary asked. The youth girl paused by the door, “Oh, yes. We have church tonight. Sorry, didn’t anybody tell you?”
“Church, tonight?”
“Yeah, we have a visiting speaker. He’s in for revival meetings. I’m going tonight and Dorothy will come in and be with you instead.”
“Revival meetings?” The old lady raised her head, eyes sharp. “How’s it going?”
“The preaching is good. Good speaker and everything but . . . well, we’d all hoped . . . well, you know, the Yoder boys. We’d kinda hoped that maybe this would speak to them somehow but . . .” she shrugged. “Nothing yet.”
The invalid nodded slowly, pressing her lips together, her hands tightening around the worn comforter, gathering it into knots.
“Well, I’ve got to go,” the girl said. “See you tomorrow.”
The door thumped shut behind her.
Mary sat looking straight ahead, her jaw set. Finally, she took in a long breath, exhaled slowly through her mouth and nodded again. “Yes,” she said to the empty room. “Yes. That’s just what I’ll do.”
****
“Not having breakfast, Mary?”
“No . . . I . . . well . . . I’m not eating today.” She smiled the gentle smile she was known for.
“Not at all?”
“No. Not today.”
“Well, okay then.” The girl put down the pan. “Are you feeling alright?”
The same curious half smile. “I’m fine. Perfectly fine.”
“Okay.” The girl cast her a questioning look. “Sure you’re not sick?”
“Nope.” A quick warm smile. “I’m not sick. I’ll eat again by and by.”
****
“Mom, I’m worried about Mary.”
“Why? Is something new?”
“She’s not eating.”
“Not at all?”
“Not at all. Hasn’t since Tuesday evening.”
“Oh.” Her mom paused in the act of plugging a mixer beater into the hand mixer. “Oh,” she said again, the mixer wavering in one hand with only one beater in it. “I’ll . . . I’ll check on her.”
****
“Mary, is there some reason you are not eating?”
Mary smiled. “I guess you could say that.”
“What’s the problem?”
Mary ran a white hand over the wrinkled quilt, smoothing it. “No problem. Just heard that you were having revival meetings. That’s all.”
“So, you were . . . were fasting?”
Mary just smiled.
****
The minister sat on the edge of his borrowed bed and stared down at the screen of his simple flip phone.
He glanced at the time and then nodded. I should call my wife. She’s probably still up.
“Yeah,” he said, pacing the floor a few minutes later. “It was really strange. I mean, Monday night, nothing.”
“Tuesday night, nothing. I just couldn’t get through to them at all. It was like there was a glass wall between us. They just sat there, wooden-faced and cold. But then . . . Wednesday night it was different. From the moment I stood up and opened my Bible I knew something was different. The room felt different. It was like I had access to the people.”
“Yeah,” he said, pausing at the window. “It was amazing. Somebody who I could tell was under conviction even responded. The next night it was the same, only more so. I don’t know what happened but something changed, big time.”
He leaned his head against the cool glass.
“I might know what it was,” his wife said.
“You? What? What was it?”
“I just talked to my cousin over there. They help take care of Mary. You know, Mary who is bedfast. I doubt you’ve seen her because she wouldn’t be at church, but I know she listens in and prays a lot.”
“Okay, so you are saying . . . what?”
“Well, I talked to my cousin Susan and she said that somehow Mary didn’t know about revival meetings. I guess in the press of everything somebody forgot to tell her or everybody else assumed somebody else did. Anyway, she didn’t know about the meetings till Tuesday evening when one of the girls was about to leave.”
“Anyway, she started fasting. Twenty-four hours after that, Wednesday night, you were just standing up to preach.”
“Oh,” he said, staring unseeing out into the night. “Oh,” he said again. “Yes . . .” he said, nodding and feeling his hair bunching between his forehead and the glass. “That makes sense. That explains a lot.”
He pushed back from the window and switched his phone to the other ear. “That makes a lot of sense.” He was walking now, gesturing to the empty room with his free hand. “And Thursday night was even more that way. Three people came forward. And Friday night again. Three more, the ones I could see were holding out. It was amazing.” He paused, staring at, but not seeing, the photo collage on the bedroom wall. “When I got to church that first Monday night I could tell something was wrong. The air was tense and the whole atmosphere was just . . . unrestful somehow. People talked after church, but not much, and the whole thing seemed strained. But tonight when I left, people were still standing around talking. The whole atmosphere was different somehow. Unified, restful.”
He heard his wife laugh softly. “They always told me Mary was a spiritual powerhouse. A real prayer warrior.”
“I believe it,” he said, pacing across the room to absent-mindedly pick up, then drop, the tail of a string of tiny LED lights draped over a bookcase. “I’ve never seen anything like it, but I’ll tell you, you could feel the difference. It was night and day.”
“Well, you know she can’t really do anything else much. Just pray and talk to people.”
“She doesn’t need to do anything else,” he said, standing in the middle of the room, now gesturing at the far wall. “That woman can move mountains.” He nodded forcibly. “Yes, she saw an opportunity to change the church and she took it.”
She took it.
So often we look for opportunities “out there.” Some people “have opportunities” and some don’t. I don’t think John Bunyan saw his being locked away from his fledgling converts and street congregations as a glowing opportunity. I certainly doubt that he viewed prison and being dragged away from his beloved family, leaving them poor and alone, as a great opportunity to influence Christian literature for centuries.
But it was.
I doubt that our invalid Mary viewed her frail self, confined as she was to bed, dependent and consuming of others’ time, as a person of influence and power in the church.
But she was.
She, sick and confined to bed, but with lots of time, found she could do little but pray. But prayer is not little.
She had an opportunity. An opportunity to pray, unhindered by the rushing and bustle of the world.
John found, sitting in prison, that he had very few opportunities, but he did have one. The time to write.
We all have opportunities.
They have been given to us to steward. To grow, nurture, and use for the kingdom.
It is, after all, not so much the opportunity given to the man that matters. It’s what the man gives to the opportunity.
John Bunyan and Mary could have crumbled into discouragement and true uselessness. After all, look at all the opportunities others had and how few they had. But they didn’t. Like a true steward, they went looking for what they could do with the situation they did have and its accompanying opportunities.
They found it.
They were diligent in it, and it brought them before the great King.
And so can we.
“Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men” (Proverbs 22:29).
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Darryl Derstine lives in Holmes County Ohio with his wife and 7 children. He works at Christian Aid Ministries Foundation and CAM Books. He can be reached at bss@camoh.org or 330-893-4915.
