August 12 | Moments Almanac | Hold
On August 12, 1771, Baptist preacher John Waller wrote a letter from behind bars in Urbanna Prison, Virginia — dragged off a stage mid-sermon, whipped, jailed, and forbidden even to walk outside until his trial. Almost five years later to the day, George Washington wrote a very different letter from New York, describing an army under twenty thousand men, sick with smallpox, and about to be surrounded by a force that outnumbered them. Two letters, five years apart, describing the same shape of trouble: hemmed in on every side, holding the line anyway. Take heart. Notice the scattered moments. Share the grace.
Lord, some days feel like every road out is cut off. Remind me that pressed on every side is not the same as forsaken — that You have never once let go of the ones who are Yours, no matter how the walls close in. Give me the same stubborn hope John Waller had in a jail cell in 1771: that this trouble, whatever shape it takes, is not the end of the story.
Welcome to Moments Almanac. Today is August 12th, and on this day in 1771, John Waller picked up a pen inside a jail in Middlesex County, Virginia. Waller had once gone by the name Swearin' Jack Waller. He even sat on the grand jury that indicted a Baptist preacher named Lewis Craig for preaching without a license. But something in Craig's quiet defense got under Waller's skin. And within a year, the prosecutor had become a preacher himself. Now he was riding from behind bars. And this was not his first Virginia jail. Six days earlier, at a meeting held at Brother McCain's, a preacher named William Weber was addressing the congregation when a county magistrate came running at him in fury. The parish parson came right behind. They dragged Weber from the stage and hauled him, Waller, and four other men into custody. Brother Wafford was whipped on the spot, and the magistrate and the parson searched the men for weapons, accusing them of mutiny against the authority of the land. They found none. So they asked a simpler question. Did these men have a license to preach in this county? They did not. And separate Baptist itinerants like Waller rarely did get one. Applying for a license meant conceding that the established church had the authority to decide who was fit to carry the gospel. The men were offered their freedom if they would postbond and promise never to preach in the county again. They refused. So the sheriff took them to what Waller called close jail, under orders not to let them so much as walk in the open air until court day. And yet, the gospel kept moving through the bars. Crowds gathered outside to listen. Waller wrote that among them were many of the great ones of the land. Six more brethren, he added, sat in jail in the next county. Threats were rising on every side. Almost five years later to that day, another letter went out from a different kind of confinement. On August 12th, 1776, George Washington wrote from New York to his general Charles Lee. His army numbered fewer than 20,000 men and was in Washington's own word very sickly. Smallpox was tearing through the camps. The enemy would number 25,000 or more. Washington's troops, well, they were scattered thin across the islands and narrow positions, and reports suggested that the British might seal the rivers while troops closed off the land. Every route out could disappear at once, and victory was not at his command. His task, as he put it, was simply to endeavor to deserve it. Set these two letters side by side, and they could describe the shape of so much trouble. A small company hemmed in on every side by a stronger power, choosing to hold its ground anyway. Waller and his brethren refused the bond that would have brought them freedom. Washington and his men dug into islands and narrow strips of land, waiting for militia that might not arrive in time. Neither man had any guarantee how his story would end, but Waller had a promise that did not depend on winning. Remember the words of Paul in Second Corinthians, we are hard pressed on every side but not crushed. We're perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. Struck down. Washington's cause was political, not a gospel conviction, and this episode doesn't pretend otherwise. But there's something worth noting in both men. The choice to hold a position when you cannot see the end of the story simply because it is the ground you have been given to stand on. Waller would spend 46 days in a Middlesex jail. He would be arrested again after that, and again. More than a hundred days in jail across four Virginia counties before Virginia finally gave up trying to silence him. Sometimes faithfulness looks less like advancing and more like refusing to abandon the ground that God has given you. You may be surrounded, you may be outnumbered, you may not know what tomorrow brings. But stand firm anyway. And that's Moments Almanac for today, August 12th. I hope you'll join me tomorrow. Until then, take heart. Notice the scattered moments, and share the grace.
