It's been quite a long time--almost two months, actually--since I have participated in The Week in Words, hosted by Barbara H. But my absence from that meme in no way reflects my absence from the world of words, and numerous quotes have caught my attention in the weeks since I last posted--and in previous weeks!--and have been building up in my drafts folder. Time to let some of them out. :)
My focus this week is Elisabeth Elliot and the words of wisdom that flow from her pen. I'm grateful to get a daily email devotional from her writings, sent out by Back to the Bible; and it's amazing how often I'll think, "This devotional is PERFECT for what I'm going through." God is good like that. :)
One day as I was pondering the mysterious intersection between God's will and ours, I read these words of hers, sent out on March 15 and taken from A Lamp for My Feet:
All through the Bible we see the interworking of the will of God and the will of man. It was God, Creator and Sovereign, who conceived freedom for man... All things are so arranged in God's universe that He may work His will through man's exercising his gift of a free will... Here lies the tremendous mystery--that God should be all-powerful, yet refuse to coerce. He summons us to cooperation... Remember how He asked for help in performing His miracles: Fill the waterpots, stretch out your hand, distribute the loaves.
In another devotional, this one from February 17, taken from On Asking God Why, Elisabeth describes my feelings exactly about the writings of C. S. Lewis: :)
I never catch up with [C. S.] Lewis--I have to start over as soon as I've finished one of his books because, while I am always completely convinced by his argument, I find I can't reproduce it for somebody else so I have to go back.
And another gripping quote, from the same devotional:
Plato, three hundred years before Christ, predicted that if ever the truly good man were to appear, the man who would tell the truth, he would have his eyes gouged out and in the end be crucified.
And finally, from January 18, taken from All That Was Ever Ours...this whole devotional was outstanding...Elisabeth wrote about John Coleridge Patteson, a nineteenth-century missionary from England to Melanesia; and besides her own insights, it was enlightening to read quotes from Patteson himself...this, for example, is what Patteson had to say about missionary progress reports (and it brought to my mind some of the dilemma we faced when we were serving overseas):
My objection to mission reports has always been that the readers want to hear of progress, and the writers are thus tempted to write of it; and may they not, without knowing it, be, at times, hasty that they may seem to be progressing? People expect too much. Because missionary work looks like failure, it does not follow that it is. Our Savior's work looked like a failure. He made no mistakes either in what He taught or in the way of teaching it, and He succeeded, though not to the eyes of men.
For more gathered words, visit Barbara H.'s Stray Thoughts.
Being a missionary myself, I understand Patterson's thoughts. I tend to not write at all because people are looking for progress and what I am seeing as progress does not look like progress to them. We Christians sometimes fail to see that God works mostly in small ways.
ReplyDeleteI have benefited from Elisabeth Elliot's daily devotionals too. I find them to be what I need just about every time I read them.
Glad you’re back after a 2 month break!
ReplyDeleteThe C.S. Lewis thought is how I feel too. I can never duplicate what he says so I have to go back and read it again. ha.
Elisabeth Elliot has SUCH wise words to share. Thanks for putting them out here for us to read too. We recently gave mission reports at our church for two short-term mission trips taken over the summer, so I can see what she's saying about feeling the need to be positive in the report. Thankfully in our cases (short-term!) it was easy to find progress to report. I can only imagine the pressure those who are full-time missionaries must feel when they make reports.
So good to have you back!
ReplyDeleteI get EE's devotionals, too -- it's a rare day one of them doesn't grip me in some way. God has given her such wisdom over the years.
I feel that way about C. S. Lewis's non-fiction, too!
Amazing that God deigns to use man when He could do everything Himself (and do it so much better.) There's a lesson in there for moms -- I tended to be a "I can do it better and faster myself" mom much too often, though they did have chores to do.
I can understand a missionary's feeling he or she needs to report "progress," and even some churches' expectation of that, but having worked with the missionaries of our church for several years, we understood that some parts of the harvest field were harder to work that others, that some times and seasons were more fruitful than others. Maybe reading missionary biographies such as Adonirum Judson's having no converts for 6 or 7 years helped that perspective, and the example Patteson gives of Christ's ministry helps, too. We liked to hear of the missionaries "down" times and problems, too, so we would better know how to pray and support them, though I know they struggled with the balance between being "real" and sounding like they were complaining or whining.
What wonderful thoughts--all of them! I'll confess that the CS Lewis one hits me hardest right now because I just last month read a biographical/critical book about him.
ReplyDeleteThat last quote reminds me of a conversation I had with a couple of para-church ministry veterans. One was talking about how the ministry he had been involved with was always pushing people to "close the deal"--pray a prayer so they could announce that they'd led "x" people to Christ during a certain period of time. Apparently, those sort of stats attract (and keep) donors.
ReplyDeleteThe other fellow asserted that the Christian laborer is not called to produce results, but rather to faithfully do the work of planting, hoeing, watering. He stated that donors should be content to hear "We are using the funds you gave faithfully" without any details.
I agree with the statement about results, in the sense that God is sovereign and it is He not we who produce results. Yet how is a donor to know whether the work is being done faithfully or whether the work that is being done is truly the work of God?
The question then (and now I am speaking not just of missionaries or Christian ministries, but of all of our lives' pursuits) is how we are to evaluate our lives through God's eyes? What does He consider a success--and how can we strive for lives that are successful by His measure?