Speaker: Darlene Sala | Series: Encouraging Words | Her baby was just two weeks old when missionary doctor Margaret Brand received a note from Dr. Carol Jameson, director of the Vellore, India hospital.

“Dear Margaret,

We don’t wish to hurry you, but we must have more help in the Eye Department as soon as possible.

The Eye Department! I thought. She has to be joking! Earlier

when they had asked me, “Where do you want to work…?” I had said, “I don’t mind…, just as long as it isn’t in the eye department….”

I turned the piece of paper over and wrote:

Dear Carol,

I don’t mind being hurried, but I know nothing about eyes. You’ll have to look for someone else. Sorry….

But one hour later the messenger returned with another [note]. It simply said: You’ll learn. Please start on Monday….[1]

Those six words on a little slip of paper changed her life!

We think God will never ask us to do anything we can’t do. But the bottom line is that God knows if we can learn to do it.

Dr. Margaret took the challenge and began treating leprosy patients whose eyes were affected by the dread disease, also known as Hansen’s Disease. In time she became an expert in leprosy of the eyes.  After serving for eighteen years in India, she transferred to the National Hansen’s Disease Center in Louisiana for twenty-two years as Chief of Ophthalmology.

“How often the words…that Dr. Carol Jameson sent me…have come to mind!” wrote Dr. Margaret.  “’You’ll learn. Please start on Monday.’ We have to make a choice: Am I willing…, or do I dig my heels in and say ‘I can’t. I won’t.’”[2]

Perhaps God is asking you to do something right now you don’t think you can do. Stretch your faith and say “Yes” to God.  You may be amazed! Remember, Philippians 4:13 says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (NKJV).

[1] Dr. Margaret E. Brand with Dr. James L. Jost, Vision for God (Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House Publishers, 2006) pp 111-12.

[2] Ibid., p 325.