“Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice to You with the voice of thanksgiving” (Jonah 2:8-9).
Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale, was “discovered” in Copenhagen at the age of 9 when overheard singing to her cat. She rose to sweep all of Europe before her. When she sang at her first concert in New York, some tickets sold at auction, fetching the sum of $450—in 1850! From the concerts on her tour of the U.S. alone, she earned more than $350,000 ($10 million in today’s money) and donated the proceeds to charity.
But at the height of her career, she retired. Encyclopedia Britannica wrote, that although loved “for her vocal control and agility and for the purity and naturalness of her art,” she decided to retire “to focus on her Christian faith.” When a friend asked her, as she sat reading her Bible, why she left at the height of her career, she pointed to it on her lap and said, “When every day made me think less of this,…what else could I do?”