Victory is an 'inside job' - All The Word for Today Daily Devotionals for 2026

2 Corinthians 4:16 NKJV

In 1928, a happy, ambitious young nursing student was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Back then, such a diagnosis often meant a death sentence. Her family sent her to a nursing home for several months, hoping she would be cured. She was destined to remain in bed for the next twenty-one years! Many people would have given up, but not Isabel Smith. She approached the threshold of death on several occasions, but her faith remained strong, and she never ceased to pursue the art of living. She read voraciously, wrote letters, studied geography, and taught other patients to read and write. From her bed she studied atomic energy with a fellow patient, a young physicist, and organised a town hall meeting on the topic.

While ill, she met a kind, gentle man, also a patient at the sanatorium. She dreamed of marrying him and having a little house 'under the mountains'. At her lowest ebb, her dream kept her going. And in 1948, she got married. She then authored a book called Wish I Might, which was published in 1955. The book was 'about all the good things life has brought me', and it earned her enough royalties to buy her the mountain retreat she dreamed of.

A tragic life? Hardly! Isabel Smith achieved everything she set out to achieve, though the odds against her were overwhelming. Even when flat on her back in bed, she never stopped growing, learning, dreaming, and giving. 'Though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.' Victory is an 'inside job'.

Soul food: Exo 10-12; John 2:12-25; Ps 131; Pro 26:7-9