The Cobbler God Kept in His Quiver

William Carey mended shoes in the English village of Moulton, a self-taught cobbler with a homemade leather globe stitched together on his workbench. He had traced every coastline, memorized the populations of nations he would never visit, and prayed over countries whose languages he could not yet speak. His fellow ministers saw only a poor shoemaker. When Carey stood at a ministers' meeting in 1786 and proposed sending missionaries overseas, the elder John Ryland reportedly snapped, "Sit down, young man. When God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine."

For years, Carey labored in obscurity — stitching leather by day, studying Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Dutch by candlelight. He must have felt what the Servant in Isaiah felt: "I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing." Yet the Almighty was sharpening him like a polished arrow, hidden in the quiver until the appointed hour.

In 1793, Carey sailed for India. Over the next forty years, he translated the Bible into over forty languages, founded schools, fought to abolish the practice of widow burning, and opened the door for the modern missionary movement across the globe.

God told His Servant, "It is too small a thing for you to restore Israel alone — I will make you a light to the nations." The cobbler's workshop was never the destination. It was the quiver.