Missing Bill Borden—No Reserves. No Retreats. No Regrets.
The blog this week is a memorial to people that have greatly influenced me—specifically to those who’ve already gone home. Day 5...
This story is longer (as in 2-3 minutes of your life), but I don’t have time to make it shorter...
William Borden (1887-1913). In the late 80s, Mal McSwain took me and a couple of other guys through a correspondence course he’d designed. It was before the Internet, so we’d get packages from Mal in the mail. We had to visit 10 places like a Florence Crittenton Home, a Buddhist Temple, a retirement home, and a Mormon Temple to broaden our view of the world and distill our view of Jesus. We listened to a bunch of great cassette tapes. We read books. The first book I remember Mal telling us to read was Borden of Yale, which is the biography of William Borden.
Bill Borden was born into an extremely wealthy Chicago family and was heir to the fortune of Borden, Inc. His mom began taking him to the church that was started by a guy named D. L. Moody (see Missing Moody blog entry). A faithful mom is a wonderful thing, but that’s a story for another day.
After graduating high school at 16, Borden received an around-the-world trip from his wealthy parents. During that trip, he wrote home about his “desire to be a missionary.” One of his friends couldn’t believe that Bill was “throwing himself away as a missionary.” In response, Borden wrote two words in the back of his Bible: “No reserves.”
Borden went to Yale, and many people expected him to head back to Chicago to the family business. At Yale, he was the president of Phi Beta Kappa (though I’m not really sure what that is since I never was exposed to it). A sharp and smart young man, he received some great job offers. Turning it all down, his father told him he could never work in the family business again. It was at this time that he wrote two more words in the back of his Bible: “No retreats.”
Borden then went to Princeton Seminary, where he decided that he would be a missionary to China. Upon graduation from Princeton, he wrote two more words underneath the others in his Bible: “No regrets.”
But he never made it to China.
At the age of 25, Bill Borden contracted cerebral meningitis and died in Cairo, Egypt while learning the language he needed for China. He’d given up massive wealth to be a missionary who never made it to his destination. Some, at the time, said, “What a waste!” But one of his missionary friends, Sherwood Day—who was in Kashmir, India when he heard the news of Bill’s death, said, “I have absolutely no feeling of a life cut short. A life abandoned to Christ cannot be cut short. ‘Cut short’ means not complete, interrupted and we know that our Master does no half-way jobs. We must pray now, that those to whom God wants this to appeal, may listen.”
Wow. What a challenging perspective on life—especially when it appears that God has interrupted our plans and dreams.
In the biography (which includes a lot of letters back and forth between Bill and his mom), Bill wrote something that I’ve reflected on and repeated innumerable times since reading Borden of Yale some 25+ years ago:
“In every man’s heart there is a throne and a cross. If Christ is on the throne, self is on the cross; and if self, even a little bit is on the throne, then Jesus is on the cross in that man’s heart…If Jesus is on the throne, you will go where He wants you to go…Jesus on the throne glorifies any work or spot.”
Bill, can’t wait to meet you man. Thanks for blazing the trail and for challenging me to live with...
NO RESERVES
NO RETREATS
NO REGRETS
