When the Walls Became a Writing Desk

In 1660, a traveling tinker and lay preacher named John Bunyan was arrested near the village of Lower Samsell in Bedfordshire, England, for conducting a worship service without a license from the Church of England. He was brought before the local magistrates and offered 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. He was separated from his second wife, Elizabeth, and their children, including his blind daughter Mary, whose welfare tormented him most. He later wrote that parting from her "was as the pulling of the flesh from my bones." Yet in that cold cell, sustaining his family by making shoelaces, Bunyan began composing The Pilgrim's Progress — a book that would be translated into over two hundred languages and become one of the most widely read works in the English language.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed." Bunyan lived those very words. The authorities could confine his body but could not silence his calling.

When suffering presses in on every side, God does not waste the confinement. The very walls meant to silence you may become the place where your deepest work is born.