fightngwrmwood
Member
- Joined
- Dec 24, 2005
- Messages
- 320
An excerpt from These Strange Ashes by Elisabeth Elliot seems also to echo our Lord asking us to leave behind that which is most dear to us, to follow Him. May it bless and encourage you.
“It was a long time before I came to the realization that it is our acceptance of what is given that G-d gives Himself. Even the Son of G-d had to learn obedience by the things that He suffered. He had come for only one purpose: ‘Lo, I come, in the volume of the book it is written of me, to do thy will, O G-d.’ And His reward was desolation, crucifixion.
“Each separate experience of individual stripping we may learn to accept as a fragment of the suffering Christ bore when he took it all. ‘Surely He has born our griefs and carried our sorrows’ This grief, this sorrow, this total loss that empties my hands and breaks my heart, I may, if I will, accept, and by accepting it, I find in my hands something to offer. And so I give it back to Him, who in mysterious exchange, gives Himself to me.”
“It was a long time before I came to the realization that it is our acceptance of what is given that G-d gives Himself. Even the Son of G-d had to learn obedience by the things that He suffered. He had come for only one purpose: ‘Lo, I come, in the volume of the book it is written of me, to do thy will, O G-d.’ And His reward was desolation, crucifixion.
“Each separate experience of individual stripping we may learn to accept as a fragment of the suffering Christ bore when he took it all. ‘Surely He has born our griefs and carried our sorrows’ This grief, this sorrow, this total loss that empties my hands and breaks my heart, I may, if I will, accept, and by accepting it, I find in my hands something to offer. And so I give it back to Him, who in mysterious exchange, gives Himself to me.”
