Some people seem built for great adventures. Gladys Aylward did not. She was small, poor and not very good at school. She worked as a maid, cleaning other people's houses in London. But she believed God wanted her in China, and she would not let anyone talk her out of it.
Turned down
Gladys was born in London in 1902. As a young woman, she became a committed Christian and felt called to be a missionary in China. She applied to a mission society that sent missionaries there. After a trial period of study, they turned her down. They thought she was not educated enough and would not be able to learn Chinese.
So she saved her own money from her maid's wages, a little at a time. In 1932 she bought a train ticket and traveled across Europe and Russia, alone, to reach China. She was thirty.
The inn
In a town called Yangcheng, in the mountains of northern China, she joined an older missionary named Jeannie Lawson. Together they ran an inn for mule drivers who traveled through. In the evenings, Gladys told them stories from the Bible.
She learned Chinese well after all. She became a Chinese citizen in 1936. She took in children who had no one, one at a time, until her home was full of them.
Across the mountains
In the late 1930s, war came. The Japanese army invaded China and fighting reached her area. In 1940, it became too dangerous to stay.
Gladys gathered about a hundred children and set out on foot across the mountains toward Xi'an, a city where they could be safe. They walked for days over steep, rocky trails. They slept outside. Sometimes they had little food. The older children carried the younger ones.
They reached the Yellow River, a wide river they had to cross, and waited, with no boat, until help came. Finally they got across and reached safety. Gladys was so sick and worn out that she collapsed when it was over.
She later lived in Taiwan, where she ran an orphanage until she died in 1970.
Why she did it
Jesus said that welcoming a child was welcoming him.
And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.
Matthew 18:5 · King James VersionThe original Greek
καὶ ὃς ἐὰν δέξηται ἓν παιδίον τοιοῦτο ἐπὶ τῷ ὀνόματί μου, ἐμὲ δέχεται.
Found in Codex Vaticanus (about AD 325), Codex Sinaiticus (about AD 350).
What it means for us
Gladys was told she was not good enough. Many of us have been told that too, or told it to ourselves. She went anyway, and a hundred children owed their lives to a woman who was supposed to be unqualified.
You do not have to cross mountains. But if you have ever felt too ordinary to matter to God, her story says otherwise. One person who keeps showing up for children is enough.