As I write, I’m preparing to bury a good friend. Another victim of cancer. Another casualty of the Fall. Another reminder of the ignoble prosaic ending to the poem so noble and full of wild glory that neither tongues of men nor angels can fully capture: a human life. An ordinary human life.
There actually exists no such thing: an ordinary human life. It is a great misnomer, an oxymoron of colossal proportion. To think a life ordinary is to believe a delusion and reveals the shameful fact that we can barely bear true beauty. We tire quickly of sunsets, find wind inconvenient, and define boring as watching the grass grow. It is a very strange thing that we find violent virtual deaths in our films more exciting than the gentle life that miraculously awakens when buried, pushes up through the dark soil, catches the sunlight for food, and grows into a brilliantly green brush stroke of beauty in the very real landscape art we view in full 4D every day.
“As for man, his days are like grass” (Psalm 103:15). Perhaps that is why we find the lives of men boring and ordinary. Watching a man is like watching the grass grow.
The Grass Withers
My friend was like grass. But he found the adventure of grass less boring than most of us. For much of his life he was a farmer. Year after year he tilled the dark soil, buried the seeds, and watched the epic of nourishing life slowly unfold. He endured the suspense and sometimes the tragedies of storms, droughts, and pestilence. He knew that the flower of field was both fiercely resilient and fearfully fragile.
My friend was like grass. His life was one of unassuming beauty. In the landscape of reality you would not notice him unless you took the time to look carefully. He was gentle and quiet. He moved like the slow, steady rhythms of the seasons. He was poetry in motion. But we frenetic 21st century westerners, who have largely lost the patience required for poetry, might call it slow motion.
With unpretentious drama he came to faith in the living Christ while young, faithfully loved a faithful wife for forty years, and faithfully raised three children well into adulthood, each child now sharing his faith. And he faithfully shared his faith with anyone willing to listen, and many who weren’t. Even in the evening of his life, when his grass-like body was withering, hospice nurses heard about his hope in the sun of righteousness, the bright morning star, who makes it possible for us, even though we die, to live in the eternal morning where the grass of God withers no more (Psalm 90:5–6; Malachi 4:2; John 11:25–26; 1 Peter 3:15; Revelation 21:4; Revelation 22:16).
My friend was like grass. Grass might seem to grow slowly, but in reality its poetic life is brief. The scorching wind of cancer passed over him and now he is gone (Psalm 103:16). He suffered the ignoble dishonor of death, and this week we will sow the perishable remains of this gentle, down-to-earth man, like a seed, in the ground.
But make no mistake: we will indeed sow it. For it is the core of the Christian hope, the hope at the core of my friend’s very soul, that what is sown perishable will be raised imperishable, what is sown in weakness will be raised in power, what is sown natural will be raised spiritual (1 Corinthians 15:42–44).
When Grass Will Flourish Forever
A day is coming when we will know the epic story of this quiet, grass-like man has always been far more thrilling than the best novels and the greatest films. We will marvel at our former dullness, having ever considered such a thing ordinary.
Someday the curse will be reversed and we will not have the patience to watch the millisecond epics of cinematic mass murder that captured the imagination of fallen man. We will not have the capacity to find dim phantasmal shadows entertaining at all. Not when what is playing out before us in vibrant colors now inconceivable is the gloriously wild real story of everlasting grass that, having burst from the ground, is alive with the light of the undying Star.
[Jesus said,] “You will be hated by all for my name’s sake.” — Matthew 10.22
What is decisive in Christian suffering? It lies in the fact that it is voluntary–“on account of the Word” and “for righteousness’ sake.” The disciples left everything to follow Christ. Their sacrifice was voluntary. Someone may be unfortunate to lose everything he owns and has; but he has not given up the least thing. Not like the Apostles! Herein lies the confusion.
In today’s Christianity we take ordinary human suffering and turn it into a Christian example. “Everyone has a cross to bear.” We preach unavoidable human trials into being Christian suffering. How this happens is beyond me! To lose everything and give up everything are not synonymous. To the contrary, the difference between them is infinite.
If I happen to lose everything, this is one thing. But if I voluntarily give up everything, choose danger and difficulties, this is something entirely different. When this happens it is impossible to avoid the trial that comes with carrying Jesus’ cross. This is what Christian suffering means, and it is a whole scale deeper than ordinary human adversity.
Nowadays we can become or live as Christians in the most pleasant way and without ever risking the slightest possibility of offense. We can continue to make ourselves comfortable by scraping together the world’s goods, as long as we stir into the pot what is Christian as a seasoning, an ingredient that almost serves to refine our enjoyment of life. This kind of Christianity is but a religious variation of the world’s unbelief, a movement without budging from the spot.
Christ unabashedly speaks of what would await his disciples when they witnessed to him in the world. The possibility of offense consists in being persecuted, ridiculed, cast out from society, misunderstood, and finally put to death.
Whether you experience adversities in life, whether things perhaps go downhill for you, though you as a Christian will most assuredly bear these sufferings patiently, unlike many others in the world, however patiently you bear them, this suffering is not yet akin to Christ’s suffering.
To suffer Christianly is not to endure the inescapable but to suffer evil at the hands of people because you voluntarily will and endeavor to do only the good: to willingly suffer on account of the Word and for the sake of righteousness. This is how Christ suffered. This alone is Christian suffering.
*Abridged from Søren Kierkegaard’s writings, compiled in Provocations by Charles E. Moorein.
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in us,” laments Cassius in Julius Caesar. Perhaps Shakespeare is confessing what we are slow to admit: the problem really isn’t just in our stars, it’s in our relentless pursuit of self.
This idea may be what Viktor Frankl was reflecting on when he wrote:
Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.
The wide path nearly guarantees comfort and luxury, but is insufficient for meaning and fulfillment. Jesus’ invitation requires we exit the roads on which we pursue ourselves—for, in his words, “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”
And Jesus said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. — Matthew 8.26
In some ways, the prosperity gospel’s value proposition is appealing: faithfully obey God and he will keep your life privileged and comfortable. It’s a quid pro quo—if you can muster up faith, then he will respond to your strength. But this is not the way it worked for the saints’ lives recorded in Scripture.
God chose not to save Israel from slavery, but to rescue them in it. “Ah!”—the prosperity delusion says—they were sinful; they had a lesson to learn before the Exodus. It’s clear disobedience is an element of their story, but obedience and faithfulness aren’t demonstrated anymore after the Exodus than they are before or during it.
Consider Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They were faithful, but God didn’t save them from the fire—he saved them in it. “There are four men walking around!” the king exclaimed. Daniel wasn’t spared from receiving the death penalty, but he was rescued in the depths of the pit.
Had Daniel expected God to protect him from the embarrassment of arrest, the anguish of being sentenced to death, or even the fall down onto the sandy blood-stained floor, the great man of prayer would have missed what was happening. Where was God when Daniel was falling into the pit? At the bottom, we learn, waiting in the depths of suffering.
Jesus’ disciples falsely believed that their faith in Christ would exempt them from experiencing the storms of life. When the tempest lashed against them they cried out, “Save us!” It is no different from us.
Like with Israel, God redeems us from the slavery of sin and brokenness. Like with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, Gods meets us in the fiery struggles of our world. Like with Daniel, God is the only thing sufficient to spare us from death’s sting. Yet this is not all he does.
Limiting the story of the gospel to individual salvation focuses our faith on ourselves. If our lives are the focus of Christ’s work, then going through a storm is a sign God has lost control. Yet if the gospel is about a greater work of renewing and restoring a lost and broken world, then we can trust God to be Emmanuel—God with us—in the storm.
German politician Gabriele Pauli shocked her conservative party and sent waves through news outlets worldwide when she proposed in September 2007 that marriage should only last seven years.
Described at the time as “Bavaria’s most glamorous politician,” the 50-year-old, twice-divorced, motorcycle-riding Pauli campaigned for party head, in part, with the hopes of institutionalizing what some have called “the seven-year itch.” Her plan was that marriages would automatically dissolve after seven years, at which point the spouses could renew their union or go along on their own merry ways. Pauli did not win in her bid for party leadership.
Seven-Year What?
The “seven-year itch” is a widely recognized psychological term suggesting the seven-year mark as a common time when spouses sense they have drifted away from each other and desire to explore other romantic interests. It’s also the title of an iconic 1955 motion picture, which popularized the phrase in relation to marriage.
“The world needs to see in Christian marriages a pointer to the One who stays with his bride through thick and thin.”
Or did the film create the idea altogether? The script, which would sound like relatively tame theater today, teetered on the edge of scandalous 60 years ago. It was about a married man who, after sending his wife and son away to Maine for the summer, discovers an attractive single lady (played by Marilyn Monroe) has moved into his building. At first he resists his desires to flirt, but soon he initiates toward her, though ultimately she rejects his overtures.
Following the movie’s success, the idea of a “seven-year itch” caught traction in a culture of no-fault divorce and became a convenient excuse for boredom with monogamy. Subsequent research claimed initially that such a seven-year itch was confirmed by the data, but more thorough investigation eventually pointed to four years, then other research to twelve years, then still more to three years. Increasingly, the studies are finding there’s no magic number at all, and the number seven, as well as any kind of typical point of “itch,” has just been a myth for decades.
As Long As We Both Shall Live
On June 29, 2007, just a few months before Pauli was announcing her idea in Germany, my wife and I stood before our pastor, our friends, and our family — and most importantly, before our God — and vowed to each other,
. . . I will be faithful to you In plenty and in want, In joy and in sorrow, In sickness and in health, To love and to cherish, As long as we both shall live.
As long as we both shall live. No exceptions. No out-clauses. Not just in plenty, joy, and health, but also in want, sorrow, and sickness. No allowances for any seven-year itches or any other excuse. We left father and mother, covenanted to become one flesh (Genesis 2:24), and have taken Jesus’s words with utter seriousness, “What God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:6). Neither of us would say that marriage has been easy, but here seven years in, we can say it’s a glorious thing that there are no outs but death.
For Being Ourselves and Fighting Our Sin
The stresses, strains, tensions, and pains of marriage caught both of us off guard early on. Our dating was so peaceful — too peaceful, it turned out — and engagement only had a few speed bumps. But once we were both all in, both fully believing this was our unbending commitment till death, with no loopholes or exegetical outs, then, with the conditionality of dating and engagement aside, and the unconditionality of covenantal marriage now in place, we were finally free to be our real selves. Which was such a good thing, though it soon got a little messy.
“The best marriages get better and better, but only after things first get worse.”
But these were good messes to make, ones we desperately needed (and still need). All along, the mess had been inside us (and still is), in our selfish and sinful hearts, and the real cleaning couldn’t begin happening until it was out in the open. We both previously had Christian roommates and disciplers who had pressed on our own sin and pushed us toward Jesus. But something about this lifelong covenant — something about knowing that the gig with this one roommate is till death do us part — forced us to speak up about the quirks, idiosyncrasies, and sins we otherwise could have ignored for a few months or a couple years.
As two rescued sinners, banking on Jesus for eternal redemption and for increasing redemption here in this life, we didn’t want to keep everything at surface level. We wanted to truly know each other, and become our true selves in Christ, not just the best face we could put on before marriage. We could have tried living on and on with a façade of harmony, and never strained to go deeper, and experienced only the thin joy that comes from keeping everything at the surface. But we wanted more (we still want more). We wanted greater joy. We wanted fuller satisfaction. We wanted the greater pleasure that comes only on the other side of pain and difficulty. We wanted the better relationship that comes only after things first get worse. And marriage with no exits but death has forced the issue.
For Witnessing to the World
But not only is “as long as we both shall live” better for us and for our children (much could be said about that), but we’re better able to witness to the world. The world is full of relationships with strings attached. In some of those, like employment, conditions are good and necessary. But when every relationship is fraught with conditions, it can feel like there’s no rest for the weary.
The world needs to see in Christian marriages a pointer to the Savior who, without conditions, chose to set his love on his bride, the church (Ephesians 1:4–6), and through thick and thin, with all her failures and unfaithfulnesses, continues working to “sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:26–27).
When the exceptions and conditions are gone at the most fundamental level, a man must learn to “love his wife as himself” (Ephesians 5:33) and discover the joy of Acts 20:35: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” In the covenant, we can no more leave behind the reality of our marriage than we can abandon our own bodies. “Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies” (Ephesians 5:28).
Seven years is a relatively short time, but we’re far enough in at this point to celebrate with some substance that we’re in this for the long haul. Here at our seventh anniversary, we’ve tasted enough of the benefits, not without the difficulties, to be grateful that we’re walking this path of covenantal marriage without any exceptions and outs, as long as we both shall live.
Noël and I recently returned from three weeks in Poland, Switzerland, and Italy, where my task in each setting was to give expositions of Scripture. Here are seven experiences that linger in our minds, and are bearing fruit for the way we do ministry.
1. Catholicim’s Shape and Shackles
The overwhelming common denominator of these three events was the challenge of heralding the gospel of Christ to minds and hearts shaped and shackled by centuries of religious and cultural Roman Catholicism. Yes, I do mean shackled.
Shackled by centuries of, first, forbidding (on threat of death in the sixteenth century) and, then, diminishing the reading of Scripture as dangerous to proper faith, and as subject to papal interpretation and accretion. I was told of an 80-year-old nun recently converted, who had never read the Gospel of John.
Shackled by a Roman Catholic conception of Christianity that leads people away from simple communion with God, through Christ and his word, into a thoroughgoing dependence on other mediators, including, Mary, the saints, the indulgences, the priest-enacted sacraments, and the all-encompassing structure of authority outside the Bible.
Shackled by a system of penance structured by papal rulings that burden the conscience of the ritual-driven penitent with places and times and events and structures for the temporary relief of guilt. For example, besides the usual necessity of the physical reception of grace through transubstantiated bread at the mass, and the temporary unburdening of sin at the priestly confessional, Pope Francis has declared this year a special jubilee year in which “indulgence is granted to the faithful.”
For example, his letter reads, “To experience and obtain the Indulgence, the faithful are called to make a brief pilgrimage to the Holy Door, open in every Cathedral or in the churches designated by the Diocesan Bishop, and in the four Papal Basilicas in Rome, as a sign of the deep desire for true conversion.”
The Reformation Is Not Over
Any thought that “the Reformation is over” is, it seems to me, provincial. It never came to Italy. It was muted by the peculiarly secular revolutionary spirit in France. And it was weakened in Eastern Europe by a strong Catholic counter-reformation.
Today, the great need is a robust, crystal clear, Spirit-anointed proclamation — in the churches, in the media, and one-to-one — of the gospel of justification by grace alone, on the basis of Christ alone, through faith alone, to the glory of God alone, as laid out with final authority in Scripture alone. Few things make the preciousness and power of these “alones” more clear than the religious situation in continental Europe today.
2. Gospel Movements Emerging
Every place I went I saw a growing, gospel-saturated movement of largely younger (but not only younger!) Europeans committed to church planting and aggressive evangelism and life-transforming Reformed theology. In France, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, the influence of The Gospel Coalition (TGC) is discernible.
But in line with the stated intentions of TGC, there are no international “branches.” If there are to be international expressions of the theology and ministry-vison of TGC, they must be created, conceived, structured, and led indigenously. That is happening. And as far as I can see, this is owing to the Holy Spirit’s on-the-ground work, so that TGC is not the primary catalyst but rather a way of identifying one of God’s works in relation to the same divine work in other places.
In particular, I saw some remarkable individual ministries and churches that reflect the energy and joy and seriousness of aggressive outreach. Nuova Vita is a church in Bologna, Italy, with significant outreaches to refugees and prostitutes (whom they call their “treasures”). Mark Brucato, a copastor at the church, told me one story of God’s amazing grace. One of the “treasures” came to Christ. Her most frequent “client,” instead of being alienated, also came to faith. They were both baptized and after coming out of the water, he proposed to her.
God is at work saving what we often look at as simply unsavable.
Not Every Challenge Ends with Transformation
One missionary pastor, who had been in France for thirty years, told me about a new challenge in his small church. A member of his church was studying sexuality in school, and came to the view that the Greek word porneia always means “prostitution,” rather than its usual meaning of “fornication.” This influential member was teaching, therefore, that the New Testament has nothing to say about whether an engaged couple can sleep together. Very practically he was opposing any attempt to do church discipline in such cases.
Such are the challenges in the ordinary life of a church planter in France.
3. Hope for Hopeless Collegiates
Bologna, Italy, has the oldest university in Europe, and evangelicals are reaching out to students.
The unemployment rate in Italy, I was told, of young people ages 18–38 is about 45%. This has produced a depressed and hopeless atmosphere among many students who see little future for all their university efforts. Some even deceive their parents, pretending to be in school, but actually using the money to pursue a life of fun until the time of expected graduation, and then, just when their parents would find out, they commit suicide.
Christ has hope for these students, because what he offers is so eternally valuable that neither poverty nor affliction can stop a new believer from overflowing with joy and generosity (2 Corinthians 8:1–2).
4. Two Surpises in Rome
We spent a whole day walking around the Colosseum and Roman Forum in the heart of Rome. Two things were new and surprising to me. One was the sheer size of the Colosseum. It simply was overwhelming for its greatness — especially its height — knowing that it was built in the first century without any modern machinery. These massive stones were set in perfect place — so that they are still holding 2,000 years later — without any cranes. It is the largest amphitheater ever built. Construction began under the emperor Vespasian in AD 72. It was completed in AD 80 under his successor and Titus.
The other striking thing was realizing that the Colosseum was built with the spoils taken by Titus from the Jewish Wars in which the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. In AD 82, the Arch of Titus was built by Domitian to commemorate Titus’s victory in those wars. It is still standing. And as I stood there, I saw inside the arch the sculptures of the victory procession where the Jewish Menorah is clearly visible. “Along with the spoils, an estimated 100,000 Jewish prisoners were brought back to Rome after the war, and many contributed to the massive workforce needed for construction” of the Colosseum (Wikipedia).
5. Nudity in the Vatican
We visited the Sistine Chapel which, of course, has the hugely famous scenes of God’s creation and the history of redemption memorialized in Michelangelo’s paintings. My admiration for Michelangelo’s artistry is huge. I am less sure of what he was trying to communicate.
The sheer quantity of nudity in the Vatican is astonishing to anyone who has not already decided that comments like this are a sign of artistic oafishness.
I come away with the serious question whether all these ubiquitous private parts are a devout message, or a subtle disdain for the church. Is the in-your-face exposure of God’s buttocks really a faithful exposition of Exodus 33:23? Or is the pope being mooned?
My own take is that if this is an attempt at exposition, it does not succeed.
6. Joyful, Humble, Missionary Calvinists
Predestination was a hot topic surrounding the conference in Italy. I was interviewed for a television program by an Assembly of God host and one of his questions was, “What does predestination mean for you?” Then there was an on-stage interview in front of 1,500 folks where one of the questions was again, “Why is predestination important?” I did my best to be pastorally sensitive and faithful to the Scriptures, like Acts 13:48, “The Gentiles . . . began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.”
My sense is that the divisions in the church over this issue are, in part, generationally defined. The older stereotypes of those who hold to Reformed doctrines do not apply the way they once did. Increasingly, those who love these doctrines are joyful, humble, evangelistic, mission-minded, and in love with the church. When the stereotypical objections don’t work anymore, we are left with the Bible. For example, the prayer of Jesus to the Father: “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me” (John 17:6).
7. All Cultures Need Transformation
I was asked about the effects of culture on evangelism. What seemed crucial to me to say was that all cultures are man-centered, self-exalting, and essentially insubordinate toward God. All of them — American, Italian, German, Polish, Nigerian, Brazilian, Chinese — all of them. The reason for this is that all cultures are made up of human beings. No humans, no culture.
And according to Scriptures, all human beings, apart from supernatural new birth through Christ, are by nature insubordinate to God and in love with their own glory. “The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:7–8). “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (John 5:44).
So the forms of rebellion vary from culture to culture. But at root, all of them “do not submit to God’s law, and indeed cannot.” Man is at the center, not God. All are equally in need of the gospel of sovereign grace.
Pray for Europe
My overall sense as I return to the steady-state ministry at home is that God has a people who are passionate for his name all over Europe. We saw the evidences of hearts of stone and flint. But mainly we were impressed that this is not unique to this place or this century. Nor is it a problem for God “who turns the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of water” (Psalm 114:8).
So let’s pray for the church in Europe, even as we long for a great awakening here in America. Just when all the analysts are pointing out that the power of Christianity has moved South and East, would it not be just like our God to surprise everyone with a great turning to Christ in the fifty countries of Europe — perhaps next year on the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation.
It is not that Dad would not listen to serious complaints; it is not that Scripture does not have other things to say. But every generation of Christians has to learn that whining is an affront against God’s sovereignty and goodness.
But the text must first be read in its context. Earlier the psalmist expresses his commitment to trust in God and not in any merely human help (Ps. 118:8-9), even though he is surrounded by foes (Ps. 118:10). Now he also discloses that his foes include “the builders” (Ps. 118:22) — people with power within Israel. These builders were quite capable of rejecting certain “stones” while they built their walls — and in this case the very stone the builders rejected has become the capstone. In the first instance this stone, this capstone, is almost certainly a reference to a Davidic king, perhaps to David himself. The men of power rejected him, but he became the capstone.
Moreover, this result was not achieved by brilliant machination or clever manipulation. Far from it: “the LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes” (Ps. 118:23). In his own day Isaiah portrays people who make a lie their refuge while rejecting God’s cornerstone (Isa. 28:15-16). The ultimate instance of this pattern is found in Jesus Christ, rejected by his own creatures, yet chosen of God, the ultimate building-stone, and precious (Matt. 21:42; Rom. 9:32-33; Eph. 2:20; 1 Peter 2:6-8) — a “stone” disclosed in all his true worth by his resurrection from the dead (Acts 4:10-11). Whether in David’s day or in the ultimate fulfillment, this marvelous triumph by God calls forth our praise: This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it (Ps. 118:24).
“Encouragement comes to me from many different sources, and I would like to be able to pass some of it on to others,” reflected Elisabeth Elliot in her first newsletter, penned in the winter of 1982.
In the 21 years that followed Elliot would share stories, encouragement, and struggles with her readers—providing a glance at a heart that was, at the same time, captured and challenged by Christ. In a series on why Christians suffershe wrote:
The last newsletter told of my mother’s [cranial surgery]. I spent Thanksgiving weekend with her in the hospital. It was hard to see her thin, weak, and disoriented—she whom I think of as quick-witted and alive.
My psalm for the day was the sixty-third. I told myself that I must not dwell on things seen, but on things unseen…. When I went to see her later that morning, I read her the passages. I asked for reasons for thanksgiving she could think of, and she came up with quite a long list.
The Lord was there. I was sure of it, and I was strengthened. I think she was too.
Following her husband Jim Elliot’s slaughter by the indigenous tribe the two served as missionaries, Elliot invested her life not only in Christian ministry, but in returning to the tribe to know and serve them.
Though her story is one of inner strength and fortitude, it is also one of inner quietness and responsiveness. Elliot was, in every respect of the word, observant; listening and engaging with what she understood God doing in and around her—in life’s most trying moments as well as its daily frustrations. She explains:
Jesus slept on a pillow in the midst of a raging storm. How could he? The terrified disciples sure that the next wave would send them straight to the bottom shook him awake with rebuke.
He slept in the calm assurance that his father was in control. His was a quiet heart.
Purity of heart, said Kierkegaard, is to will one thing. The son willed only one thing: the will of his father. That’s what he came to earth to do. Nothing else.
A quiet heart is content with what God gives. It is enough. All is grace.
One morning my computer simply would not obey me. What a nuisance. I had my work laid out, my timing figured, my mind all set. My work was delayed, my timing thrown off, my thinking interrupted.
Then I remembered. It was not for nothing. All is under my father’s control—yes, recalcitrant computers, faulty transmissions, drawbridges which happen to be up when one is in a hurry. My portion. My cup. My lot is secure. My heart can be at peace. My father is in charge. How simple!
Response is what matters.
Elliot’s writings are profound in their honesty and simplicity. Above all, she connects faith to daily life—in both its banality and brutality. The source and hope is the same. She reminds:
Whatever may be troubling you at this moment is not new to the Lord Jesus. He is not taken by surprise. He is the same—in a prison cell in World War II and in the midst of your dilemma. It is no dilemma to Him. He is not going to leave you.
