Patricia St. John

It's hard to review Patricia St. John's autobiography An Ordinary Woman's Extraordinary Faith.  The English children's author and missionary to Morocco (among shorter stints elsewhere) wrote her life's story shortly before her death in 1993.  From a literary perspective there is much to complain about.  The story seems to jump from one episode to another without a real attempt at connecting the pieces.  It gives the book a feeling of this happened then this happened then this happened.  On many occasions the narrative wasn't entirely clear and left me confused about what had happened.

I also couldn't tell where she stood theologically.  St. John was a nurse missionary but still did significant work in evangelism, Bible teaching, and other "traditional" missionary work.  Yet I all I could tell about her beliefs was that she was broadly evangelical.  Not that there's anything necessarily wrong about broad evangelicalism--I just would have wanted more theological reflection in a missionary's account of her life.

One last complaint.  An Ordinary Woman's Extraordinary Faith didn't really let me get to know Patricia St. John.  There was some self-reflection, including real struggles to understand God's purposes in profound human suffering, but most of the book was given to telling what happened.  For example, she never gives any sustained attention to the fact that she never married.  Did she feel called to singleness?  Did the opportunity never present itself?  Did she willingly reject marriage and family for a life of service among Moroccan street children?  I don't know.  Similarly, I was puzzled to learn at the very end that a memorial service was held for her at All Souls, Langham Place in London.  What was her connection to All Souls?  There was no mention of the famous church with its even more famous pastor John Stott.  Did she know John Stott?  Or what about other prominent British evangelical leaders like J. I. Packer or Martyn Lloyd-Jones?  To my disappointment her autobiography does not answer.

That's her autobiography, but what shall we say about her life?  Patricia St. John forsook the world to serve Jesus Christ.  She lived in huts, spent many a night on the bare ground, and treated dying babies in famine- and civil war-ravaged Ethiopia.  Maybe my complaints about the lack of insights into her thoughts and feelings have missed the point.  Her whole life was given to self-denial.  Why should she conclude her life with the kind of self-seeking discovery that infests the best-selling memoirs today?  We can say of her what Paul said of Epaphroditus:  "So receive him in the Lord and honor such men, for he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking in your service to me" (Ph. 2:29-30).

Here was my favorite part:

Perhaps the most significant thing about these last years has been the gradual but growing realization that the apparently almost fruitless years of toiling and praying in Moslem lands are beginning to yield a harvest.  The news reaches us of a new hunger there for God's Word, and a new burden of prayer in the hearts of God's people.  We cannot publish what we hear.  We can only rejoice over these small green shoots (292).

Be glad for her work and follow her example.