When God called Florence Nightingale

Young Florence
Painting by August Egg

One day in 1837, Florence Nightingale was sitting beneath a huge cedar tree at her family's estate near London.  Although only 16 at the time, she received a message that would alter her life forever.  Florence identified this experience as a "first calling from God."

Greatly inspired, Florence felt drawn to the field of nursing.  This was not looked upon kindly by her mother and sister.  Ladies of their social stature were expected to become wives and mothers, not "lowly" nurses!

Florence never married, but not for lack of suitors.  She felt that marriage would inhibit her primary calling.  This one-pointed devotion enabled her to work especially hard.  In 1853, she became Superintendent of the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in London.  In 1854, she (plus a staff of 38 nurses whom she had personally trained) went to Turkey to help improve  horrific conditions from the Crimean War.

It was there that Nightingale successfully met her biggest nursing challenges.  Fatal mass infections were commonplace due to medication shortages, unsanitary conditions, and official neglect of the situation.  Nightingale became known as "The Lady with the Lamp" because she would continue her visits to the sick and dying far into the night.  She was called "a ministering angel" and was even immortalized in the 1857 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem Santa Filomena:  Lo! In that house of misery   A lady with a lamp I see    Pass through the glimmering gloom,  And flit from room to room. 

Throughout it all, Nightingale never forgot the Source of her calling.  Putting into practice her lifelong study of biblical perspectives, Florence remained a finely-tuned instrument of Divine love and mercy.

Resources

https://www.hampshirelive.news/news/history/history-embley-park-florence-nightingales-4741799

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale