Pioneer Day

Agnes Caldwell and her family traveled with the Willie Company (a handcart company of pioneers that were caught in an early storm crossing the plains) and suffered terrible hardships with the others. When the rescue wagons came, they took on all the infirm and those who couldn’t walk, but the able-bodied still had to press forward on foot. Nine-year-old Agnes and some of the other children decided to try to keep up with the wagons in hopes of being offered a ride. Sure enough, after a time one of the drivers asked her if she’d like to ride with him, an invitation she gratefully accepted. As she tells the story:

“At this he reached over, taking my hand, clucking to his horses to make me run, with legs that seemed to me could run no farther. On we went, to what to me seemed miles. What went through my head at that time was that he was the meanest man that ever lived or that I had ever heard of.”

I’ve tried to imagine this scene. I’ve pictured a little girl who had given everything she knew how to give for a cause she had been taught was dearer than life itself. I’ve wondered how it must have felt to finally be offered some relief and then have it just as suddenly withdrawn.
Agnes continues:

“Just at what seemed the breaking point, he stopped. Taking a blanket, he wrapped me up and lay me in the bottom of the wagon, warm and comfortable. Here I had time to change my mind, as I surely did, knowing full well by doing this he saved me from freezing when taken into the wagon.”

I have thought of this story many times when I find myself or my friends in what I would call “running –beside-the-wagon” moments. I have wondered if, at such times, when we have given all we have to give, relying on the promise that the Lord will lift us up, when we are questioning why he doesn’t pull us into the wagon, when we are about to collapse from the sheer exhaustion of it all – what if we stopped and listened to the Spirit? Perhaps we might hear him saying, “Wait. Wait just a little longer. You don’t know what I’m trying to save here.” Maybe the message would even be, “You don’t know who I’m trying to save here. You don’t know whose life might be eternally affected by your willingness to hang on for one more moment, to keep taking step after step. I promise I won’t leave you to drop. I know what you can bear, and your trials will not exceed your capacity.” I have to trust that the Lord knows what he is doing with my life, even in those hard moments when I can’t possibly see what he has in mind.