“Of course there will be hard places. What of it?
To choose ease rather than effort is to choose slow decay.”
—Isobel Kuhn, missionary to China and Thailand (1901–1957)
“Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us,
and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”
—Hebrews 12:1
As the bamboo curtain descended over China in 1950, Isobel Kuhn fled her home in the Yunnan province with her six-year-old son. They climbed over the ragged peaks of the Hpi Maw Pass into northern Myanmar [then Burma]. Her beloved Lisu people left behind, Kuhn mourned the separation, but since world events had left her no choice, she prepared to move on.1 She was ready to trade the bamboo curtain for what she called “the plush curtain”—a comfortable retirement in the United States of America.2
The Dilemma
However, God had other ideas, and so did her husband. John Kuhn had risked personal safety to temporarily remain in China and prepare his Lisu sons and daughters in Christ for the approaching difficulties. Even so, his thoughts, like his wife’s, turned to the future.
Isobel knew her husband well, and she knew her mission board. As the China Inland Mission reconfigured to become the Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF), they began redeploying missionaries to surrounding countries to extend the gospel to diaspora Chinese or other unreached people groups. John Kuhn would definitely be asked to transfer to a new field.
Isobel made a preemptive move, writing John in July 1951: “Please do not offer for the new fields until you get home and we can discuss everything together!”3 Now in her fifties, Isobel knew her strength was not what it once was. For over twenty years, she had climbed the peaks and canyons of Lisu territory, camping on the trails and often living in the squalor of the scattered villages. She had lived pioneer missions, and she had loved it. But any new pioneer work was for the young.
As expected, the new OMF called on John as soon as he made it to Hong Kong. He accepted a one-month emergency assignment in Thailand to help in the transition instead of joining his wife in the U.S. immediately. He wrote to Isobel: “I have not promised anything. I note your desire that we confer together first, and truly no decision would work out satisfactorily if we were not united in heart about it.”4 Isobel responded, “Praise the Lord for a good husband who saw so clearly! My heart was at rest about the North Thailand trip.” However, deep within, Isobel began to see that her family’s place was not yet behind the plush curtain.
Heart Change Needed
When John joined the family in the U.S., Isobel listened as he described the spiritual needs of Thailand. Among the thousands who had never heard the gospel message in northern Thailand were Lisu people, distant relatives of those they had served in China. “But John, we are old,” Isobel protested. “It is a young man’s job!”5 The hurdles of a new field seemed insurmountable—a new language, a different culture, strenuous terrain, and blistering heat.
Yet, truths gleaned from Bible study and experience in God’s work helped Isobel overcame her fears. She wrote, “In counting the cost before we build, we must face the fact of difficulties, but, as someone has wisely put it, ‘Don’t look at God through your difficulties. Look at your difficulties through God” (Luke 14:28–30).6 She felt as if God was saying,
Of course there will be hard places. What of it? To choose ease rather than effort is to choose slow decay. . . . You and John are needed out there. He has been appointed superintendent. You two can hold the fort while younger people are studying the language. Your experience of nearly a quarter of a century of missionary work will benefit the others. The younger ones may have faith, courage, and strong bodies, but they don’t have experience.7
God had changed Isobel’s perspective. She laid aside her hopes for comfort and joined her husband in the work once again.
The China chapter of her life had ended. A new chapter in Thailand began. The epilogue in an armchair in America would have to wait.
The Call of Comfort
The siren call of comfort allures even the strongest Christians. This weakness is not unique to Isobel Kuhn. We resonate with her confession from her twenties: “I had never given the foreign field one thought up to that time. I was a stay-at-home body by disposition and a veritable slave to physical comforts. Travel never attracted me, for it meant strange faces and strange ways—in other words, discomfort.”8 At the crossroads in her fifties, the same temptation of comfort drew her to the plush curtain. Often we face the same dilemma.
Competing Loves
The path of self-denial is hard. Too often we love our comforts more than what God wants for us. Entertainment or enriching experiences excite us more than drawing close to Him. The path of least resistance lures us away from the trail of fruitful difficulty.
We battle against competing loves. The apostle John warns, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). Our love for the things of this world competes with our love for God. The key to self-denial is growing to love God and His will more than any competing interest (Matthew 22:37).
Slow Decay or Fruitfulness?
Loving ease is the path of slow decay. Loving God above all leads to fruitfulness as God works through you despite difficulties along the way. Slow decay or fruitfulness? The choice is yours. What you love most will determine which path you take.
- Read more about Isobel Kuhn and her work in China in Daring Devotion, Day 8. ↩︎
- Isobel Kuhn, Green Leaf in Drought-Time (Chicago: Moody Press, 1957), 12. ↩︎
- Isobel Kuhn, Ascent to the Tribes: Pioneering in North Thailand (Chicago: Moody Press, 1956), 13. ↩︎
- Ibid., 15. ↩︎
- Ibid., 17. ↩︎
- Ibid., 18. ↩︎
- Ibid., 18. ↩︎
- Isobel Kuhn, By Searching: My Journey Through Doubt Into Faith (Chicago: Moody Press, 1959), 43. ↩︎
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