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talking or writing books. He
worked at the carpenter’s bench.
He fought temptation in the
wilderness and put prayer into
action. He healed the sick. He
cast out devils. He wept with His
friends. He treated women on an
equality. Girt with a towel, He
washed the feet of fishermen. He
personally went and mixed and ate
with outcasts. He began His
preaching at home. He
transformed weak, ignorant,
selfish, and cowardly men into
heroes. He Himself brought
Heaven to earth wherever He
was.”
Grenfell envisioned life as an
adventure, to be lived wholly for
God. “Jesus Christ challenges us
to be his knights, to go forth into
the world to make it better. We
are not here to be ‘safe.’ We must
have faith and take risks.
Life is not meant to be easy and
humdrum. Life is a challenge.”
He adopted Paul’s metaphor of a
race; a race which every Christian
could win. “Think then of a race
in which it is never too late to be a
winner, of a battle in which we
have always left a chance of being
victor. Think of a prize which
grows greater, and only grows
greater as we possess it.”
Christians need to listen for the
call of God, and be ready to
answer the call. “It is my habit
constantly to ask God to teach me
each day how to rightly use my
faith,” Grenfell wrote. Grenfell
dreaded the thought that he could
have missed his opportunity for
service: “There is the terrible fact
that if I had not heard the call of
Christ in the tent that day, I might
possibly have been a physician in
Harley Street, being driven about
in my Rolls Royce! I would not
have lost the opportunity of going
to Labrador for anything.”
Today, Grenfell’s approach to
life—with its vocabulary of
‘prize,’ ‘battle,’ ‘fight,’ and
‘adventure’ might be labeled
‘macho.’ He had no patience with
passivity in the face of illness,
injustice, and sin. “We must love
what [Christ] loved and fought for
what He fought.”
Not everyone is called to service
in a setting such as Labrador. The
affluent suburbs need committed
Christians just as much as the
inner cities. The principles that
Grenfell lived by are worthy for
any Christian, not only physicians.
We cannot, as Grenfell pungently
expressed, “drift to heaven like
dead fish down a stream.” Christ
calls us to much more than this.
Quotations are from The Prize of Life
(1914), The Fisherman’s Saint (1930), A
Man’s Faith (1908), A Labrador Logbook
(1938), Forty Years for Labrador (1932)
As mentioned, most of Grenfell’s books are
long out of print. But several titles
frequently turn up in both second-hand
book stores and in church libraries, and can
often be obtained by book search services.
These include:
Grenfell’s autobiography Forty Years for
Labrador (and its earlier version, A
Labrador Doctor).
A book of devotions, A Labrador Logbook.
An account of travels, Labrador Looks at
the Orient.
Three of Grenfell’s books of Labrador tales
(worth reading for their descriptions of life
among the common people in Labrador),
Down North on the Labrador, Labrador
Days, and Off the Rocks are in print from
Ayer. Northern Neighbors and Tales of the
Labrador are not difficult to find.
William Pope compiled an anthology of
Grenfell’s writing, The Best of Wilfred
Grenfell (Lancelot Press, 1990).
Many biographies of Grenfell were written
in the first half of this century (I count at
least fifteen). Two biographies are currently
available, James Kerr’s Wilfred Grenfell,
His Life and Work (Greenwood) for many
years the definitive biography, and more
recently Ronald Rompkey’s Grenfell of
Labrador (University of Toronto Press,
1991). Try also Tom Moore’s Wilfred
Grenfell (Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1980),
and J.T. Richards Snapshots of Grenfell,
(Creative Press, 1989).
Editor’s note: Andrew Seddon is himself a medical
doctor, as well as a published writer and a CLJ editor.
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