from A Lamp for My Feet by Elisabeth Elliot
There is no end to the new methods offered for success, self-realization, fulfillment, understanding, and happiness. Seminars, conferences, and workshops abound. Go to so-and-so, get counseling, a new exercise program, a new diet, another degree, job, husband, house, color scheme. If it's new, it's good.
"Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. Do not be swept off your course by all sorts of outlandish teachings; it is good that our souls should gain their strength from the grace of God" (Heb 13:8,9 NEB).
Fixity of heart is a rare thing and probably always has been. It is easier to follow after the world in its futile pursuit of happiness, simply because we are like sheep and we go astray. To stay quietly by the Shepherd seems harder, but in the end we find there (and nowhere else) our soul's real strength.
Pascal wrote, "I have discovered that all the unhappiness of man arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber." Try spending a half hour in a room alone, without music, without television, without even reading. Can you find any peace or happiness there? If not, perhaps you have not begun to learn what is truly important.
Showing posts with label elliot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label elliot. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Serious Play, Careless Work
excerpt from Keep a Quiet Heart by Elisabeth Elliot
When I was a kid we rushed home every afternoon from school, burst into the house to make sure Mother was there and then collected the kids on the block to play Kick the Can or to build playhouses out of wooden greenhouse boxes. Equipment didn't cost us a cent. Adults didn't have to supervise us or drive us anywhere or coach us. We just played. We were kids, and we knew that after-school time was playtime--until it was time to work (practice the piano, set the table, clear the table, do homework!).
Something has changed. Educators have gotten terribly serious about play and terribly casual about real physical work. Billions of dollars are lavished on developing crafts which nobody really needs and forms of recreation which people have to be taught to like. We've got "toys to grow on," computer games, play groups, playgrounds. Tiny tots who would have been happy with a few Tupperware containers and some spoons are given fancy mechanical toys that do things, and taught that if they make huge messes with finger paints they're being creative, which they didn't know they wanted to be.
I've seen Indian children playing in the river, climbing trees, sliding down mudbanks. But at the same time they were often catching fish or finding wild honey, fruit, or edible snails. They had no toys to play with but they had a marvelous time (at the age of three or four, mind you) building fires, sharpening knives, whacking away at the ever-encroaching weeds. Nobody told them what to do. Child's play naturally turned into useful work. My little three-year-old Valerie was as adept at these activities as the Indians--learned just as they had, by daily observation of adult men and women at work, then by imitation. A girl of ten could weave a perfect hammock; a boy of ten could handle a blowgun and bring home the "bacon," i.e. a bird or monkey for supper. A lot of what they did mattered, and they had much more fun than children who spend a good part of their childhood doing things that don't matter very much to them or anybody else.
Aren't children nowadays often getting far too much of the wrong kind of attention and not nearly enough of the right kind? Does it really make sense for kids of six and seven to be so frantically serious about organized sports and to be geniuses at computer games, but to have no idea how to amuse themselves without a coach, a team, a uniform, an arsenal of weapons, or an expensive and complicated piece of electronic equipment--not to mention daily transportation to and from the athletic field, park, ice rink, anywhere but the back yard? Must they be rounded up, herded, instructed, shouted at, praised, coaxed, and hovered over by adults who are paid money to pay attention to the poor little hooligans in order to keep them out of the adults' hair during "working hours"?
Is anybody paying attention to how a child works? Is it assumed that if asked to rake a lawn he'll do it halfheartedly? Will he sweep the garage in silent fury or will he rejoice in doing a thorough job of it? Will she scrub a sink till it shines and know herself to be a useful member of a household? School teachers desperately try to teach children who have never really labored with their hands to do schoolwork--not a very good place to start, it seems to me. If a child is not given to understand that he has a responsibility to help make the wheels of home run smoothly--if he is not given work which matters, in other words--why should he imagine that it matters very much whether he cooperates with teachers and fellow students? His parents have failed to give attention to a vital matter. Their attention has been elsewhere--on their own interests, jobs, amusements, physical fitness, or only on the child's health and a misguided notion of happiness which leaves out work altogether.
The jungle Indian children I knew learned without formal lessons of any kind. They were with their parents more or less all the time--everybody sleeping around a single fire at night, boys hunting or fishing with their fathers by day, girls planting and gathering food with their mothers. It was hard work to survive. They took responsibility to collect firewood and keep the fire burning. Very rarely did a parent even have to tell a child, let alone nag him, to do his job. It was expected and the kids met the expectations. Nobody over two had much leisure, but they had a lot of fun. I've never seen people laugh so much. It was a peaceful life, a life without anything like the severe stresses and conflicts we have created for ourselves. Wouldn't it be lovely to go back to all that?
But how are we supposed to do it? We don't live in the jungle. Children have jungle gyms instead of real trees to climb; plastic swimming pools instead of a clear flowing river; sliding boards instead of mudbanks. The work necessary to keep everybody alive and fed and clothed is done where they can't see it. So far as children can see, it usually has nothing to do with being fed and clothed but only with money. Their parents (often, alas, both of them) tear off somewhere in the morning and come home at night exhausted, having spent their day at who knows what. The newspaper, dinner and TV take up a chunk of what's left of the day. Football, the child learns by observation, is vastly more important than anything else in the father's life. It takes precedence over everything, rivets his father's attention, something he himself has never managed to do. So he, like his father, seeks escape from home and the responsibilities of home.
Is the situation irremediable? I don't think so. Surely we could eliminate some of the frustration and discontent of "civilized" family life if we took our cues from the "uncivilized" people who work almost all the time (and enjoy it) and play very little of the time (without making a complicated chore out of it). Happiness, after all, is a choice. Let your child see that you put heart and soul into the work God has given you to do. Do it for Him--that changes the whole climate of the home. Draw the child into acceptance of responsibility by starting very early. Expect the best. If you expect them to oppose you, to "goof off," to be terrible at two, rude at ten, intractable as teenagers, they won't disappoint you.
It takes longer, of course, to teach a child to do a job than it takes to do it yourself--especially if you have not given him the chance to watch you do it fifty times. It takes sustained attention--the sort of attention a child desperately needs. He can't get too much of that. He needs to be convinced that he is a necessary and very much appreciated member of the family.
What about the sacrifices? We're going to have to make some if we mean to correct our mistakes. Instead of sacrificing everything for money and sports, which most people seem ready to do without a qualm, we may have to sacrifice money and sports for our children. We will certainly have to sacrifice ourselves.
But, of course, that is what being a father or a mother means.
Elisabeth Elliot is a missionary, author and speaker. Her daily devotions are available through devotions.org - a ministry of Back to the Bible.
When I was a kid we rushed home every afternoon from school, burst into the house to make sure Mother was there and then collected the kids on the block to play Kick the Can or to build playhouses out of wooden greenhouse boxes. Equipment didn't cost us a cent. Adults didn't have to supervise us or drive us anywhere or coach us. We just played. We were kids, and we knew that after-school time was playtime--until it was time to work (practice the piano, set the table, clear the table, do homework!).Something has changed. Educators have gotten terribly serious about play and terribly casual about real physical work. Billions of dollars are lavished on developing crafts which nobody really needs and forms of recreation which people have to be taught to like. We've got "toys to grow on," computer games, play groups, playgrounds. Tiny tots who would have been happy with a few Tupperware containers and some spoons are given fancy mechanical toys that do things, and taught that if they make huge messes with finger paints they're being creative, which they didn't know they wanted to be.
I've seen Indian children playing in the river, climbing trees, sliding down mudbanks. But at the same time they were often catching fish or finding wild honey, fruit, or edible snails. They had no toys to play with but they had a marvelous time (at the age of three or four, mind you) building fires, sharpening knives, whacking away at the ever-encroaching weeds. Nobody told them what to do. Child's play naturally turned into useful work. My little three-year-old Valerie was as adept at these activities as the Indians--learned just as they had, by daily observation of adult men and women at work, then by imitation. A girl of ten could weave a perfect hammock; a boy of ten could handle a blowgun and bring home the "bacon," i.e. a bird or monkey for supper. A lot of what they did mattered, and they had much more fun than children who spend a good part of their childhood doing things that don't matter very much to them or anybody else.
Aren't children nowadays often getting far too much of the wrong kind of attention and not nearly enough of the right kind? Does it really make sense for kids of six and seven to be so frantically serious about organized sports and to be geniuses at computer games, but to have no idea how to amuse themselves without a coach, a team, a uniform, an arsenal of weapons, or an expensive and complicated piece of electronic equipment--not to mention daily transportation to and from the athletic field, park, ice rink, anywhere but the back yard? Must they be rounded up, herded, instructed, shouted at, praised, coaxed, and hovered over by adults who are paid money to pay attention to the poor little hooligans in order to keep them out of the adults' hair during "working hours"?
Is anybody paying attention to how a child works? Is it assumed that if asked to rake a lawn he'll do it halfheartedly? Will he sweep the garage in silent fury or will he rejoice in doing a thorough job of it? Will she scrub a sink till it shines and know herself to be a useful member of a household? School teachers desperately try to teach children who have never really labored with their hands to do schoolwork--not a very good place to start, it seems to me. If a child is not given to understand that he has a responsibility to help make the wheels of home run smoothly--if he is not given work which matters, in other words--why should he imagine that it matters very much whether he cooperates with teachers and fellow students? His parents have failed to give attention to a vital matter. Their attention has been elsewhere--on their own interests, jobs, amusements, physical fitness, or only on the child's health and a misguided notion of happiness which leaves out work altogether.
The jungle Indian children I knew learned without formal lessons of any kind. They were with their parents more or less all the time--everybody sleeping around a single fire at night, boys hunting or fishing with their fathers by day, girls planting and gathering food with their mothers. It was hard work to survive. They took responsibility to collect firewood and keep the fire burning. Very rarely did a parent even have to tell a child, let alone nag him, to do his job. It was expected and the kids met the expectations. Nobody over two had much leisure, but they had a lot of fun. I've never seen people laugh so much. It was a peaceful life, a life without anything like the severe stresses and conflicts we have created for ourselves. Wouldn't it be lovely to go back to all that?
But how are we supposed to do it? We don't live in the jungle. Children have jungle gyms instead of real trees to climb; plastic swimming pools instead of a clear flowing river; sliding boards instead of mudbanks. The work necessary to keep everybody alive and fed and clothed is done where they can't see it. So far as children can see, it usually has nothing to do with being fed and clothed but only with money. Their parents (often, alas, both of them) tear off somewhere in the morning and come home at night exhausted, having spent their day at who knows what. The newspaper, dinner and TV take up a chunk of what's left of the day. Football, the child learns by observation, is vastly more important than anything else in the father's life. It takes precedence over everything, rivets his father's attention, something he himself has never managed to do. So he, like his father, seeks escape from home and the responsibilities of home.
Is the situation irremediable? I don't think so. Surely we could eliminate some of the frustration and discontent of "civilized" family life if we took our cues from the "uncivilized" people who work almost all the time (and enjoy it) and play very little of the time (without making a complicated chore out of it). Happiness, after all, is a choice. Let your child see that you put heart and soul into the work God has given you to do. Do it for Him--that changes the whole climate of the home. Draw the child into acceptance of responsibility by starting very early. Expect the best. If you expect them to oppose you, to "goof off," to be terrible at two, rude at ten, intractable as teenagers, they won't disappoint you.
It takes longer, of course, to teach a child to do a job than it takes to do it yourself--especially if you have not given him the chance to watch you do it fifty times. It takes sustained attention--the sort of attention a child desperately needs. He can't get too much of that. He needs to be convinced that he is a necessary and very much appreciated member of the family.
What about the sacrifices? We're going to have to make some if we mean to correct our mistakes. Instead of sacrificing everything for money and sports, which most people seem ready to do without a qualm, we may have to sacrifice money and sports for our children. We will certainly have to sacrifice ourselves.
But, of course, that is what being a father or a mother means.
Elisabeth Elliot is a missionary, author and speaker. Her daily devotions are available through devotions.org - a ministry of Back to the Bible.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Unbreakable?
I recently read the prayer of Jesus for his disciples in John 17. One phrase stood out. "I pray that you would protect them from the evil one." This is a prayer I can pray fully for my child. While I'd like to pray "Protect him from injury, accident, pain, heartbreak and stupidity," that would not necessarily be in the will of God.
Elisabeth Elliot's* comments on this subject today are worth considering:
How do we reconcile God's promises for protection with the fact that so many evil things do happen in our lives? Can we believe God for protection?
This question comes up often, and no wonder, since there are many promises in the Bible about protection, including (especially in the Old Testament) physical protection. We must be careful to interpret Scripture with Scripture, and if we examine the record we find that God did not by any means always protect His people from harm. He has absolute power to keep us safe, both physically and spiritually, but His engineering of the universe made room for man's freedom to choose--that is, freedom to will to obey or to disobey Him. This is a deep mystery. Man's disobedience brought evil into the world, and all of us are subject to it. God does not cancel out its effects, even for His choicest servants (John the Baptist, Stephen, those nameless victims of Hebrews 11:35-37, for example).
Nevertheless, we have the promises. Romans 8:35-39 is one of my most reread passages. I believe we can rest assured that we are invulnerable so long as God does not give permission for us to be hurt. If He gives that permission, He will not leave us alone. He goes with us through the valley, the deep water, the furnace. He will never, absolutely never, leave us or forsake us.
And that means I can rest, reassured. God loves him more than I can ever imagine and that's better than life.
*excerpt from Keep a Quiet Heart
Monday, August 31, 2009
The Lust for Security
A quote from Elisabeth Elliot in A Light for My Path:Once we have set ourselves to be pilgrims and strangers on the earth, which is what Christians are meant to be, it is incongruous for us to continue to insist upon the sort of security the world tries to guarantee. Our security lies not in protecting ourselves from suffering, but in putting ourselves fully into the hands of God. The desire for physical and material security makes us sly and hard. No. We must be like little children. The child in its father's arms is not worried. It lies quietly at rest because it trusts its father.
We disobey sometimes because we say it is impossible to do what God asks. Impossible? Perhaps what we mean is impossible to do that and keep our security, impossible to obey without tremendous cost, or at least tremendous risk. Where, then, will we find safety? Is it likely that we will find it elsewhere than in the arms of the Father?
Prayer: Teach me to rest in your everlasting arms. Make me know that all other security is illusion.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
My Calling as a Mother
A recent devotional from The Institute for Creation Research had a profound impact.
"Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love" (Ephesians 4:1-2)
This verse can apply to my calling as a mother, writer, wife, singer, Bible teacher, even friend. As I apply this verse to my life habit and patterns in each of those callings, I blush and kneel.
And then, from Elisabeth Elliot in Lamp for My Feet, another confirmation about how we are called to live:
No Other Choice
No Christian ever gets beyond the power of temptation as long as he lives in "this mortal coil." Jesus was not beyond it--who are we that we should become more spiritual than Jesus? If we say that we have been delivered forever from sin, we are deceiving ourselves. We are never in a more vulnerable spot than when someone sins against us. All the "old Adam" in us rises up to retaliate. Perhaps we control the urge to punch the person or even to retort with the withering words that spring to mind. But then we wake up in the night and think about all the ways we could put this individual in his place--polite ways, we tell ourselves, Christian ways, but put him in his place we certainly will. The still small voice asks: Is that Christlike?
"The love of Christ leaves us no choice....His purpose in dying for all was that men, while still in life, should cease to live for themselves" (2 Cor 5:14,15 NEB).
No other choice but love. Cease to live for yourself. Live for Christ. Don't bother singing, "Oh, how I love Jesus" as long as you are plotting retaliation. You don't really have that choice, not if you're a Christian.
Lord, help me make my calling sure; to live only for You.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Whaddayamean I don't measure up?
Elisabeth Elliot always has sage advice and thoughtful perspective:
I used to say my husband was 98 percent perfect, but I was nearsighted and focused on the remaining 2 percent until it filled my vision. It is a bad habit. Tonight I am grateful for my husband for many reasons. To name a few:
How perfect is that?
Many women have told me that my husband's advice, which I once quoted in a book, has been an eye-opener to them. He said that a wife, if she is very generous, may allow that her husband lives up to perhaps eighty percent of her expectations. There is always the other twenty percent that she would like to change, and she may chip away at it for the whole of their married life without reducing it by very much. She may, on the other hand, simply decide to enjoy the eighty percent, and both of them will be happy. It's a down-to-earth illustration of a principle: Accept, positively and actively, what is given. Let thanksgiving be the habit of your life.
Such acceptance is not possible without a deep and abiding belief in the sovereign love of God. Either He is in charge, or He is not. Either He loves us, or He does not. If He is in charge and loves us, then whatever is given is subject to His control and is meant ultimately for our joy.
I used to say my husband was 98 percent perfect, but I was nearsighted and focused on the remaining 2 percent until it filled my vision. It is a bad habit. Tonight I am grateful for my husband for many reasons. To name a few:
- He has been gainfully employed since he was a teenager. The last 28+ years with the same employer.
- He faithfully walks the dog and makes sure the house is secure every night before he goes to bed.
- He regularly cleans up the dishes after supper.
- He remembers most of what I forget.
- He has a great sense of humour.
- He let me have the remote control one night last week.
How perfect is that?
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
This was encouraging today, quoting Elisabeth Elliot:
Waiting requires patience--a willingness calmly to accept what we have or have not, where we are or where we wish we were, whomever we live or work with.
To want what we don't have is impatience, for one thing, and it is to mistrust God. Is He not in complete control of all circumstances, events, and conditions? A spirit of resistance cannot wait on God. I believe it is this spirit which is the reason for some of our greatest sufferings. Opposing the workings of the Lord in and through our "problems" only exacerbates them. It is here and now that we must win our victories or suffer defeats. Spiritual victories are won in the quiet acceptance of ordinary events, which are God's "bright servants," standing all around us.
Restlessness and impatience change nothing except our peace and joy. Peace does not dwell in outward things, but in the heart prepared to wait trustfully and quietly on Him who has all things safely in His hands. "Peace I leave with you; I do not give to you as the world gives" (John 14:27, NEB). What sort of peace has He to give us? A peace which was constant in the midst of ceaseless work (with few visible results), frequent interruptions, impatient demands, few physical comforts; a peace which was not destroyed by the arguments, the faithlessness, and hatred of the people.
Jesus had perfect confidence in His Father, whose will He had come to accomplish. Nothing touched Him without His Father's permission. Nothing touches me without my Father's permission. Can I not then wait patiently? He will show the way.If I am willing to be still in my Master's hand, can I not then be still in everything? He's got the whole world in His hands! Never mind whether things come from God Himself or from people-- everything comes by His ordination or permission. If I mean to be obedient and submissive to the Lord because He is my Lord, I must not forget that whatever He allows to happen becomes, for me, His will at that moment. Perhaps it is someone else's sinful action, but if God allows it to affect me, He wills it for my learning. The need to wait is, for me, a form of chastening. God has to calm me down, make me shut up and look to Him for the outcome.
His message to me every day
Is wait, be still, trust, and obey.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
The Calm Spirit of Christ
Quoted from Elisabeth Elliot:
Today is moving day. There will be plenty of reason for fretting and stewing, impatience, and turbulence. I am one who seems to feel that unless I do things or unless they are done my way, they will not be done right, and the day will disintegrate. But I have been watching the sea--very turbulent this morning because of a tropical storm hundreds of miles away--and I remember Him whose word was enough to calm it.
Speak that word to me today, dear Lord: peace. Let your calm spirit, through the many potentially rough minutes of this day, in every task, say to my soul, Be still. Even this day's chaos, with all its clutter and exertion, will be ordered by your quiet power if my heart is subject to your word of peace. Thank You, Lord.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
The Lust for Security
Elisabeth Elliot is a wise woman. She speaks both from experience and from the truth of God's word. Not everyone likes what she has to say, but her reputation remains unsullied, on par with the likes of Billy Graham. I subscribe to a daily email - excerpts of her devotional writings. This excerpt was particularly thought-provoking this week:
Our security lies not
in protecting ourselves from suffering,
but in putting ourselves fully
into the hands of God.
Once we have set ourselves to be pilgrims and strangers on the earth, which is what Christians are meant to be, it is incongruous for us to continue to insist upon the sort of security the world tries to guarantee.
Our security lies not in protecting ourselves from suffering, but in putting ourselves fully into the hands of God. The desire for physical and material security makes us sly and hard. No. We must be like little children. The child in its father's arms is not worried. It lies quietly at rest because it trusts its father.
We disobey sometimes because we say it is impossible to do what God asks. impossible? Perhaps what we mean is- impossible to do that and keep our security, impossible to obey without tremendous cost, or at least tremendous risk.
Where, then, will we find safety? Is it likely that we will find it elsewhere than in the arms of the Father?
Lord, teach me to rest in your everlasting arms. Make me know that all other security is illusion.
Our security lies not
in protecting ourselves from suffering,
but in putting ourselves fully
into the hands of God.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
The Truth is Stranger than Fiction
"What you want is what you need." ~ Toyota
You can't have it all. You are not here to do yourself a favor. You may not have it your way. You opted out of all that when you made up your mind to follow a Master who himself had relinquished all rights, all equality with the Father, and his own will as well. You are called not to be served but to serve, and you can't serve two masters. You can't operate in two opposing kingdoms. These kingdoms are the alternatives. Settle it once for all. It is, quite simply, a life-and-death choice.
~ Elisabeth Elliot
Thursday, January 11, 2007
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