{"id":1716,"date":"2022-06-13T08:11:18","date_gmt":"2022-06-13T12:11:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1716"},"modified":"2022-06-13T08:11:18","modified_gmt":"2022-06-13T12:11:18","slug":"no-explanation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/06\/13\/no-explanation\/","title":{"rendered":"No Explanation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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It\u2019s hard to come up with an explanation for the extraordinary life of William Borden.
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Borden graduated from a private high school in Pennsylvania in 1903.\u00a0 He was just 16 years old and was already one of the richest men in the United States.\u00a0 William was the primary heir to his family\u2019s fortune, which had come from silver mining out West and not from the famous line of dairy products championed by another Borden family.\u00a0
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If money is no object, what kind of present do you give a 16-year-old high school graduate?\u00a0 Borden received a chaperoned trip around the world.\u00a0
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As he journeyed for the better part of a year throughout Asia, Europe and the Middle East, William was overwhelmed by his encounters with people who seemed mired in financial and spiritual poverty.\u00a0 He wrote back home, \u201cI\u2019m going to give my life to prepare for the mission field.\u201d\u00a0
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His enthusiasm was contagious.\u00a0 Upon entering Yale in 1905, he immediately set out to establish small group Bible studies across the campus.\u00a0 By the end of his first year, 150 fellow freshmen had joined a group, and by the time he graduated in 1909, at least 1,000 of Yale\u2019s student body of 1,300 had become part of the movement.\u00a0
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Borden loved sports.\u00a0 He joined the collegiate wrestling and crew teams and captained his own sailing yacht.\u00a0 Friends were captivated by his outgoing personality and fun-loving spirit.\u00a0 He declined to join a fraternity, however, fearing that it \u201cmight set him apart from the class.\u201d\u00a0 He likewise turned down numerous job offers at the end of his senior year.\u00a0
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Along the way Borden personally financed a new street mission to reach out to people in extreme need in New Haven, Connecticut.\u00a0 He routinely volunteered his services.\u00a0 A visitor from England, when asked what had most impressed him during his time in America, replied, \u201cThe sight of that young millionaire kneeling with his arms around a \u2018bum\u2019 in the Yale Hope Mission.\u201d\u00a0
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After earning a theological degree at Princeton, he turned toward his ultimate goal \u2013 ministering to Uyghur Muslims in northwestern China.\u00a0 In order to obtain a firsthand grasp of Islam and Arabic, he moved to Cairo, Egypt.\u00a0 There he boarded with a Syrian family so he could experience conversational Arabic day by day.\u00a0 \u00a0
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In March 1913, however, he contracted cerebrospinal meningitis.\u00a0 Within three weeks he was gone.\u00a0 William Borden was just 25 years old.\u00a0
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The biography Borden of Yale \u201909<\/em> includes an oft-quoted anecdote.\u00a0 When he first heard the call to the mission field, he wrote the words \u201cNo Reserve\u201d in his Bible.\u00a0 When he later doubled down on his commitment to head overseas instead of settling into the family business (not to mention any of his other lucrative offers), he added the words \u201cNo Retreat.\u201d\u00a0 Within days of his death he added a final pair of words: \u201cNo Regrets.\u201d
\u00a0
We live in an era when a majority of people, including a huge number of Christ-followers, are content to live \u201cuncalled\u201d lives.\u00a0 Preoccupied with our own issues, we struggle to articulate anything beyond ourselves that is worth living for, preparing for, sacrificing for, even dying for.\u00a0
\u00a0
If you could describe the nature of your spiritual commitment by writing just six words in your own Bible, what words would you choose?\u00a0 \u00a0
\u00a0
Cynics tend to sniff that Borden\u2019s life had been on a remarkable trajectory, and that he could have made a real difference in the world if he hadn\u2019t succumbed to missionary mania.\u00a0
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But he did<\/em> make a real difference in the world.\u00a0 His life is still \u201cspeaking\u201d more than a century later.\u00a0
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William Borden\u2019s gravestone in the American Cemetery in Cairo is etched with these words:\u00a0\u201cApart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation of such a life.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0
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May we receive the grace to live in such a way that our lives will make no sense at all apart from Jesus.

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It\u2019s hard to come up with an explanation for the extraordinary life of William Borden.\u00a0Borden graduated from a private high school in Pennsylvania in 1903.\u00a0 He was just 16 years old and was already one of the richest men in the United States.\u00a0 William was the primary heir to his family\u2019s fortune, which had come from silver mining out West… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1717,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[93,453],"class_list":["post-1716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-commitment","tag-missions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1716"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1718,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716\/revisions\/1718"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}