Failure

Our lives rarely take the course we ourselves planned, if we planned at all. I was reminded again of that reality when I viewed a magnificent bronze sculpture near Bothwell in South Lanarkshire, Scotland. The magnificent scene is that of a great lion leaping on a running man and is in the frozen attitude of biting his arm off. The fierce sculpture is taken from an actual event in the life of David Livingstone, a Scottish missionary to Africa. The lion seized him and “shook me like a terrier does a rat,” breaking his arm in two places before the big cat was driven away.

David Livingstone was impressed with the need for medical missionaries in parts of the world yet unreached with the Gospel message. He persuaded his father to allow him to pursue a medical career and following that, travel to Southern Africa to join missionary Robert Moffat. Upon his arrival he found that twenty years of missionary work had resulted in only 40 communicant members of the church. He stood one day with Moffat looking out over the endless jungle, where he saw the smoke of a thousand villages full of people who had never heard the Biblical message. After several years in association with another missionary of the London Missionary Society, Livingstone decided to launch out on his own. He embarked on a remarkable trek into the almost trackless wilderness hoping to glean a rich harvest of souls.

If ever a man’s life is measured by the achievement of his goals, David Livingstone’s was an abject failure. During the better part of 32 years in the jungle, Livingstone had but one possible convert, and he was doubtful. Mission work is not why he is remembered. The Scottish missionary kept detailed records and drew accurate maps of regions never seen or explored by white men before. He was fascinated with the rivers and falls, flora and fauna, and most of all, with the tribes and languages he found in the remote regions of his exploration. Sixteen years into his work, Livingstone resigned from the Missionary agency and continued his work with the sponsorship of the English government.

He tried to fight the hideous slavery system that the Arab slave traders had established across the continent but had to rely upon them for his own survival several times.  He tried to find, without success, the source of the Nile River. He was apart from his family for years at a time and his six children essentially grew up fatherless. His wife died of malaria waiting for his return.

He was kind to the natives, bringing medical help to some, and always seeking to show the love of Christ to them. He was treated kindly as a result and given help in his explorations. When he died, his African followers buried his heart under a tree and carried his body hundreds of miles to Zanzibar; he body was buried in Westminster Abbey.  David Livingstone, totally unbeknown to himself, inspired a generation of missionaries and explorers to follow his trail into the interior of Africa, and with great success, bring Christianity to previously unreached people. While Arab slavery remains vigorous today in parts of Africa, it was eliminated in many areas after Livingstone’s death.

One of the lessons from the life and death of David Livingstone is that we cannot see into the future and it may be that what we do now is merely laying the groundwork for our children and grandchildren or someone else to succeed in some great work. We may even be perceived as failures or wasting our time though the work is valuable or necessary. Admittedly, Livingstone was far from perfect and he did fail at a number of endeavors. He admitted that he was not a good father. He was sorely disappointed that his missionary work was total failure, but what he took for failure was seed planting for others to harvest.

Bill Potter