Chains That Could Not Hold a Story

In November 1660, authorities arrested John Bunyan, a tinker-turned-preacher from Elstow, Bedfordshire, for conducting worship services without a license from the Church of England. The magistrates offered him a simple bargain: stop preaching and go free. Bunyan refused. "If I were out of prison today," he told the court, "I would preach the gospel again tomorrow, by the help of God."

That refusal cost him twelve years in Bedford County Gaol. His blind daughter Mary could not visit easily. His wife Elizabeth pleaded before judges at the Bedford Assizes, only to be turned away. Bunyan supported his family by making tagged laces in his cell. Yet in that cramped room, with little more than a Bible and a copy of Foxe's Book of Martyrs, Bunyan began writing. The result was The Pilgrim's Progress, published in 1678, a book translated into over two hundred languages and the most widely read Christian allegory in history.

The apostle Paul understood this mystery. Writing from his own prison cell, he told the Philippians, "What has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel" (Philippians 1:12). Paul's chains emboldened others to speak. Bunyan's chains produced a story that has guided pilgrims for nearly three and a half centuries.

When God permits confinement, He is often preparing an influence that no open door could have produced. The walls that seem to silence us may be the very place where our deepest work begins.