Editor's note: Happy Fathers Day to all the wonderful dads! You are the best! Enjoy today's devotion from Bearded Gospel Men by Jared Brock and Aaron Alford.
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Meditation
Jesus said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.” — Matthew 19:14
Quote of the Day
The work to me is everything, and I would throw every rule overboard and send them to the bottom of the sea tomorrow, if I felt there were a more excellent way. ~ Thomas Barnardo
Thomas John Barnardo was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1845. He converted to Christianity as a teenager, and just before his seventeenth birthday, he decided to become a medical missionary in China. He enrolled at the prestigious London Hospital in Whitechapel in 1866 and set sail for England.
Victorian London was in the throes of the Industrial Revolution, and the East End slums of London were overcrowded and rife with poverty and disease. Within months of Barnardo’s arrival, a cholera outbreak swept through the neighborhood and killed more than three thousand people. Thousands of children were abandoned to the streets and forced to beg.
- On March 2, 1868, Barnardo started an East End mission in two small cottages in Limehouse called Hope Place. He named it the Ragged School.
One evening after classes had finished at 9:30 p.m., a young boy named Jim Jarvis was slow to leave on a cold evening. Barnardo shooed him out the door, not wanting the boy’s mother to get worried. Little Jarvis explained that he had no mother, and that he slept in a hay cart in Whitechapel. The young medical candidate needed to see for himself. The boy guided Barnardo through the East End and showed him children sleeping on rooftops and in gutters. This discovery had a profound impact on him. A member of Parliament and fellow Bearded Gospel Man, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, encouraged him to do something about it. At age twenty-three, young Barnardo gave up his plan of going to China, dropped out of university, and devoted his life to serving destitute children.
At first Barnardo placed a limit on the number of boys who could stay overnight at his shelter. One evening, an eleven-year-old named John Somers—nicknamed Carrots because of his red hair—was turned away because the shelter was full. Two days later the boy was found dead from exposure in an old barrel. Barnardo vowed never to turn away another child, and hung a sign that read:
No Destitute Child Ever Refused Admission.1
Within two years Barnardo purchased property and started training boys in metalwork, carpentry, and shoemaking, enabling them to gain apprenticeships and careers. In 1872—way ahead of his time—he converted an old gin joint into a coffeehouse and mission church.
The following year he married a fellow evangelist and philanthropist, Sara Louise Elmslie, and leased sixty acres to open a home for girls. Within three years he owned the land. The Girls’ Village Home—affectionately nicknamed Barnardoville—grew to include sixty-¬five cottages, a church, a hospital, and a school for fifteen hundred girls. The training provided was so thorough that the girls were hired by wealthy and aristocratic families.
The couple had seven children of their own, including Marjorie, who was born with Down Syndrome. Caring for his daughter taught Barnardo about the needs of disabled children, and he set up several specialist homes for kids with both physical and learning disabilities.
Barnardo took regular forays into the slums to find destitute boys and was attacked on many occasions, having two of his ribs broken in the process. He even visited the brothels and encouraged the prostituted women—one of whom was later murdered by Jack the Ripper—to let him care for their children.2
In the meantime, the Ragged School continued to grow. By his thirtieth birthday, Barnardo had purchased a dozen properties and a children’s magazine, and had started an employment agency, a church, a coffeehouse, a village, and a school. He also managed to go back to school himself. Though he was known as Doctor Barnardo throughout his life, he didn’t actually complete his studies until 1876.
According to the Irish Post, Barnardo also found time to write 192 books, which we can all agree seems preposterous. Barnado died of heart complications at age sixty, completely worn out from his exhausting service to humanity. At the time of his death, Barnardo’s mission cared for eighty-five hundred children across ninety-six homes, had sent more than seventeen thousand children to start a new life in Canada, and had protected and raised more than sixty thousand children in all.
Shortly after his death, a fund was established to ensure the homes would be maintained in perpetuity. One hundred fifty years later, you can still visit the Ragged School Museum in London. And Barnardo’s is now the biggest children’s charity in the United Kingdom, raising around a half billion dollars per year to help kids in need.
Contemplation
1. When was the last time you encountered the poorest of the poor?
2. How can you help ensure no child goes destitute in our world? In what ways can you help in raising the next generation of gospel children?
Prayer
Father of the fatherless, thank You for adopting us. May we, as princes in Your kingdom, do our part to serve Your children.
~ by Jared Brock
Excerpted with permission from Bearded Gospel Men by Jared Brock and Aaron Alford, copyright Jared Brock and Aaron Alford.
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Your Turn
It’s the Big Day for our dads! Happy Fathers Day to all the great men in our lives! We are thankful for every bearded and clean-shaven one of you! Men, how are you helping raise the next generation of gospel children? ~ Devotionals Daily