Frances Ridley Havergal: The Box She Packed with Joy

A brilliant young Englishwoman sat at her desk one day, packing nearly fifty pieces of jewelry into a box to give away, and called it the happiest packing of her life.

This is the story of Frances Ridley Havergal (1836-1879), who wrote the hymn Take My Life and Let It Be and then proved she meant every word, shipping a fortune in jewelry to the mission field with pure joy.

Born in England in 1836, the youngest child of a country pastor who nicknamed her Little Quicksilver. She was reading at three, mastered Hebrew and Greek, and tucked away the whole New Testament, the Psalms, and Isaiah in her memory. Her health was always frail, so she gave God everything while she still could. She once said she never spent so much as a sixpence without the quiet sense that the money was His.

One sleepless night, too full of joy to sleep, she sat up and wrote the hymn that would outlive her by more than a hundred years. Line by line she handed God everything she had. Her hands and her feet. Her voice and her lips. Her silver and her gold. Her will. Her heart. And then she did the unthinkable. She actually meant it.

In this five-minute Take 5 devotional, Pastor Rodney Coe shares the story of Frances Havergal and what one box of jewelry can teach us about real consecration. God is not after a slice of you. He is after all of you.

Scripture: Romans 12:1

📖 Read or listen on the blog: https://rodneycoe.com/frances-ridley-havergal-take-my-life/

🎙 Subscribe to Lift Up Your Day: https://rodneycoe.com/lift-up-your-day/

📚 Pastor Rodney's books: https://rodneycoe.com/books/

Heaven is closer than you think. Lift up your day.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

A woman sits at a writing desk in England, carefully wrapping pieces of jewelry in cloth and laying them into a box. Rings, brooches, a jewel cabinet she once said was fit for a countess. Nearly fifty pieces in all, and she is giving away almost every one of them. Her hands are not trembling with regret. She is smiling. She would tell a friend afterwards that she had never in her life packed a box with such pleasure. Why would a woman give away a small fortune in jewelry and call it the happiest packing she ever did? Sit back and relax. You'll want to hear the rest of the story. Welcome to Lift Up Your Day, a five-minute devotional short stories with a biblical heartbeat. I'm Rodney Coe, and today a brilliant young woman who gave away a fortune and called it Joy. Her name was Frances Ridley Havergale, born in England in 1836, the youngest child of a country pastor. She was so full of life that her father nicknamed her Little Quicksilver. She was reading by the age of three and could outcline most of the boys in the village. As she grew, she learned Hebrew and Greek and a handful of other languages. And she tucked away enormous portions of the Bible in her memory, the whole New Testament, the Psalms, the prophet Isaiah. She had a gift for music in verse too, and she poured both of them into hymns. But Frances was never strong. Her health was fragile her whole life, and she knew her time on earth might be short. So she refused to waste it. She decided early that everything she owned belonged to Christ. She once said she never spent so much as a sixpence without the quiet sense that the money was his. One evening she was staying in the house with ten other people. Some of them did not know the Lord, and the rest seemed to have lost all their joy in him. All through the visit, Frances prayed that God would reach every single one of them. By the last night he had. Her heart was so full she could not sleep. So she sat up in the dark and wrote to him that would outlive her by more than a hundred years, take my life and let it be. Line by line she handed God everything she had, her hands and her feet, her voice and her lips, her silver and her gold, her will, her heart. And here is what set Francis apart from most of us, who sing words like that on Sunday and forgets them by Monday. She meant them. A few years later she gathered up her jewelry, nearly fifty pieces, the collection fit for a countess, and shipped almost all of it to a missionary society to be sold for the work of the gospel. She kept back only a brooch or two that had belonged to her parents, and a locket holding the picture of a little niece who had already gone on to heaven. Then she wrote to her friend, I don't think I've ever packed a box with such pleasure. Frances died at just forty-two years old, but that song she gave away on a sleepless night is still being sung today in a thousand languages by people handing God their own lives one line at a time. Most of us are content to give God a tip. An hour on Sunday, a check when the plate comes by, the leftovers of a tired week. Francis Havergale handed him the whole account. Paul said it this way in Romans 12 1 present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. Not a slice of you, all of you. Your hands and your hours, and yes, your silver and your gold. The surprising thing Francis discovered is that the more she gave away, the more joy she had. That box of jewelry was the lightest load she ever carried. So let me ask you, what would change this week if you stopped singing Take My Life and started meaning it? And that, friend, is how God lifts up your day.