In 1793, John Newton (1725-1807) got wind of a diary by a woman named Margaret Magdalen Jasper (1752-1789) and decided it needed to be published. The result was The Christian Character Exemplified, From the Papers of Mrs. Margaret Magdalen. In it, we learn about a woman who endured great heartache.
Margaret, who lived in England, lost her father when she was just two years old. Her brother died in battle. Her mother passed away when she was thirty. And she eventually developed her own health concerns. She also wasn’t married, causing her to feel like an orphan of sorts. Not knowing what else to do, she became a household servant.
After converting to Christ late(r) in life, she got married at the age of thirty-one and had three children. After the birth of her third child, her health began to decline. She was diagnosed with tuberculosis and given no hope from her physician. That caused her to pen the following words in the last entry of her diary.
“I bless my God, I can now say, Thy will be done! I can give up my dear husband and children, with every earthly connection, into his hands. He will take care of them. My husband’s trial is great. I feel more for him than for myself. But Heaven will make amends for all! Oh, how I pant and thirst for the happy hour, when my Father will send his Angels to convey my spirit to rest!”
Margaret died at the age of thirty-seven. But she died well, knowing that death no longer had any sting. It no longer had any victory, as 1 Corinthians 15:54-55 says. She breathed her last breath knowing that her death would be swallowed up in the victory of Christ who conquered the grave so that she might live in paradise for all eternity. And she felt the truth of this on such a deep level that she panted and thirsted for such a happy hour.
More than 200 years later, her story is still being talked about—both in her published diary and more recently, on the John Piper website in an article titled Dying Well: One Woman’s Extraordinary Story. She left behind a legacy of hope, relinquishing every earthly treasure with the knowledge that heaven offered her so much more.
When your time comes, will you be as willing to release the things of earth to the Savior, fully confident in his sustaining hand? Will you pant and thirst for the happy hour when the Father will send his angels to convey your spirit to rest? If you’re still holding on to earthly things a little too tightly, spend some time in prayer, offering them up to God, one by one. And as the old hymn says, the things of this world will grow strangely dim.
This is an excerpt from Lee’s devotional book Finishing Well: Living with the End in Mind.
Here are some tidbits you might find interesting this week:
“When somebody said to a Christian minister, ‘I suppose you are on the wrong side of fifty?’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘thank God, I am on the right side of fifty, for I am sixty, and am therefore nearer heaven.’” -Charles Spurgeon
This seems like an appropriate article to read, given our topic this week: Prepare Your Congregation to Die by Elizabeth Reynolds Turnage.
I’ve been listening to this song nonstop for the last week: If I Got Jesus by Ben Fuller and Megan Danielle.
Standard Ebooks “is a volunteer-driven effort to produce a collection of high quality, carefully formatted, accessible, open source, and free public domain e-books that meet or exceed the quality of commercially produced e-books.” The site currently offers titles such as “The Pursuit of God” by A. W. Tozer, “Orthodoxy” and “Heretics” both by G. K. Chesterton, “The Imitation of Christ” by Thomas à Kempis and more.
“Despite what well-meaning people preach at me [after losing his wife], I must remember that God didn’t prolong my life in order for me to accomplish some great task! My existence doesn’t depend on what I accomplish, only on who I become.” -Mike Nappa, Reflections for the Grieving Soul: Meditations and Scripture for Finding Hope After Loss.
When Lee isn’t writing essays, devotional books, or Christian fiction, he is a freelance editor, as well as a freelance journalist who has written hundreds of articles for various newspapers and magazines. He’s also a fan of NASCAR, baseball, tennis, books, movies and coffee shops.
Thanks for sharing about Margaret. Somehow in all my reading about preparing for glory, I missed her story. (And thank you too for sharing my TGC article!)