The world is waiting for you.

I have been reading two accounts of the life of William and Catherine Booth's eldest daughter Katie. She became an astounding evangelist and leader, starting the work of the Salvation Army in France and Switzerland. Here is a snippet of her story, more to come.

The Booth children were left in no mist of doubt as to their future. There was an end, a point, a purpose, in their life. They grew up in an atmosphere of decision. Many children are made timid, diffident, and ineffective by their training. They are constantly told how naughty they are till they begin to believe that they are good for nothing. The Booth parents acted on a different principle. They had faith in their children and for their children. When Katie was still a little girl in socks, her mother would say to her, “Now Katie, you are not here in this world for yourself. You have been sent or others. The world is waiting for you.” What an idea that was to send a little girl to bed with! There she turned the words over and over in her own mind, “Mother says the world is waiting for me. Oh, I must be good … How selfish I was in taking that orange!” The lesson was worth 1,000 pounds to a child. In the development of Katie’s mind and character her mother’s influence was naturally very strong. The fellowship between them soon became peculiarly intimate, and it was the mother’s joy to find her alter ego in the daughter who bore her name.