Gladys Aylward and the Knock She Almost Ignored

In 1930, Gladys Aylward was a parlor maid in London — small in stature, unremarkable in the eyes of the world. The China Inland Mission had rejected her application, deeming her too old at twenty-seven and too poor a student to learn Mandarin. Most people would have accepted that verdict as final.

But Gladys could not shake the persistent, quiet conviction that God was calling her to China. It came not as thunder but as a steady, returning pressure on her heart — during dishwashing, during prayers, during the long evenings in her tiny room above the kitchen. She saved every penny from her wages, bought a one-way railway ticket across Europe and Siberia, and arrived in Yangcheng with almost nothing.

There, she became "Ai-weh-deh" — the Virtuous One — leading nearly a hundred orphaned children over the mountains to safety during the Japanese invasion, founding a church, and transforming an entire region's understanding of the Gospel.

What strikes me about her story is this: God's call came through an ordinary life to an ordinary woman, and it came repeatedly before she recognized it for what it was.