Hands That Help to Heal

In the 1860s and 1870s James White suffered several strokes that greatly diminished his health. Each new stroke renewed Ellen’s determination to do all she could to help nurse her invalid husband back to health. After one stroke, while they were living in Greenville, Michigan, she told her son to buy three shovels—one for him, one for her, and one for his father, James. When presented with the new shovel along with his wife’s rehab plan for him, James protested. Although Ellen blistered her hands using her shovel in their garden, her efforts inspired James at least to go through the motions. ^{32A. L. White, 3:186.}GOP 365.1

Later, while still trying to help her husband regain his health, Ellen White sent word secretly to their neighbors not to come help them harvest their hay. James was very disappointed, but not Ellen. She told him to stand on the wagon while she and their son, Willie, raked and then pitched the hay up to him. Later with her hands she stacked the hay as James pitched it up to her. People going by who saw this were surprised, but Ellen was undeterred. ^{33Ibid., 188.} Whatever her hands found to do, she did with all her might!GOP 365.2

Percy Magan, a recently converted Irish immigrant, came to live in Ellen White’s home for a short time. Sizing up the bashful young man while kindly smoothing his coat, she said to him, “That is nice cloth . . . but I see there is a button off. Bring me my sewing basket, and I’ll sew it on for you.” Her motherly comments and loving hands quickly put the young man at ease. ^{34The young man was Percy T. Magan, according to Merlin L. Neff, For God and C.M.E.: A Biography of Percy Tilson Magan Upon the Historical Background of the Educational and Medical Work of Seventh-day Adventists (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press®, [1964]), 29.}GOP 365.3

Ellen White’s empathy also extended to animals that were mistreated. On one occasion, as she was out riding in her buggy, she happened upon a man who was beating his thin, bony mare. When Ellen admonished the man that the animal was doing its best, he removed half the load from the wagon that the poor animal was pulling, and while apologizing to Ellen White, he told her that he would come back later to retrieve the rest of the load. ^{35Robinson, 20.}GOP 365.4

Although we can imagine Ellen’s busy hands sewing on a button or helping those around her who were less fortunate, we rarely think about those same hands gently petting her horses, or putting her arms around the neck of one of her cows that was distraught in order to comfort it after it lost its calf. Ellen could not “bear to see animals abused because, as she said, ‘they can’t tell us of their sufferings.’ ” ^36Ibid. GOP 365.5

Throughout Ellen White’s long life she practiced what she taught: that “Seventh-day Adventists should be foremost in uplifting Christ before the world.” ^{37Ellen G. White, Evangelism (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald®, 1946), 188.} Picture her using her hands to help steady herself as she climbed up on some hastily assembled tables in a beer hall in Europe in the 1880s. It was the only place the local Adventist congregation had found to rent where she could preach. Later she recalled that after she spoke for the last time in Christiania (now Oslo), Norway, people crowded around her to shake her hand. She said that “they held my hand so firmly and lovingly [that] I could not withdraw it readily.” ^{38A. L. White, 3:328.} With tears running down their faces, they said goodbye to her, knowing that she would soon be returning to the United States. Her outreach to others, whether nearby or around the world, was the natural expression of a person who lived what she preached.GOP 366.1

A few years before her death, an evangelical publisher contacted Ellen White about producing a book exclusively for them to sell. She agreed to meet with representatives from the company at Elmshaven, her home in northern California. They met in her second-floor writing room. After hearing their presentation, she started to pick up her pen in order to sign the contract they had brought with them, but then she laid the pen back down. After listening to a shortened repeat presentation from the publishing company representatives, she tactfully changed the subject, rather than picking up her pen to sign the contract. After accompanying the men downstairs to the parlor, Ellen White’s son, Willie White, returned to where his mother was still seated. He asked her why she had not signed the contract, because he had seen her pick up the pen as though she were going to do so. Her reply reminds all of us about God’s care over every aspect of His church. She said that as she picked up her pen she saw an angel standing behind the representatives, gesturing, and she knew that she was not to sign the contract. And sign it she never did.GOP 366.2

Ellen White’s books can be published by Adventist publishing houses worldwide. In fact, Steps to Christ has been translated into more than 165 languages, making Ellen White the most translated American author of either gender. Currently she is also the world’s most translated female author.GOP 366.3