Charlotte Diggs Moon, better known as “Lottie,” was born in December of 1840 in Virginia and she died in China in December 1912. For 39 years, Lottie Moon served in China to share the good news of Jesus with her Chinese neighbors. She identified herself with them taking on the practice of traditional dress and learning to speak to them in their heart language. Across her career of missionary service, Lottie labored faithfully so that the people group that held her heart would know Jesus. She baked cookies, the aroma of which drew attention, but she also served up the stories of God’s love in Jesus to children, women, and men in a land very far away from the church in Charlottesville, VA where she was baptized and began her journey in following the Lord.
From China, Lottie Moon wrote many letters to the Baptist churches back in the States and in them, she encouraged the establishment of an annual Christmas Offering that would be used to tell the world about the birth of our Savior. The Woman’s Missionary Union, in 1918, named the annual collection, The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, in honor of the one who encouraged them to begin receiving it.
In her letters, she never held back from stating the reality of missionary life and the difficulty of serving within the Chinese culture. She wrote once, “Please say to the new missionaries that they are coming to a life of hardship, responsibility, and constant self-denial.” She pleaded for more missionaries to come and join the work though she never sugar-coated the nature of the task. She was a woman who lived her faith “in earnest.” Like Albert Schweitzer, who began his missionary service the year Lottie died, Lottie would have embraced his credo. When asked, “Why did you go to Africa?” Schweitzer said, “I wanted my life to be my argument.” Lottie’s life was certainly her argument of compassion for others and passion for sharing the Gospel. She lived “in earnest!”
From Tungchow, China, in September of 1875, Lottie wrote saying, “Why should we not…do something that will prove that we are really in earnest in claiming to be followers of him who, though he was rich, for our sake became poor.” This call to action rings in our ears during the weeks leading to Christmas. It is a call to give our best Christmas gifts to ensure that the people of the world will know the hope, peace, joy, and love that our Advent wreath proclaims – even Jesus! Thank you for your gifts this month to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering of the Southern Baptist Convention and/or to the Global Missions Offering of Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. These gifts will make sure that there is an incarnational presence sharing Jesus’ love among the world’s people groups “because presence matters” in proclaiming the Gospel!
In the Love of Jesus,
Tony Tench