There's been a breakdown somewhere when men sit around waiting for the phone to ring and women get angry if a man holds a door open for them. The conduct of men and women in every society on earth up till now has always been seen as a fairly delicate and potentially explosive business. For that reason it has been surrounded with customs, taboos, rituals, prohibitions, protocol, courtesies. Have we been wise to discard them?
...does the story seem strange? Does it stretch to the breaking point an early twenty-first century credulity? If it does, perhaps it is because there is an idea of honor here that has largely been lost. (MODERNITY!!) Honor is fidelity to a system of fixed values and relations.... I write in the hope that those who know what honor means will be cheered to see that they are not entirely alone. It may strengthen them to find that, even in recent decades, there are those who recognize something far greater than their own passions, even though for the world at large there seems to be nothing else of any consequence.
If the yearnings went away, what would we have to offer up to the Lord? Aren't they given to us to offer? It is the control of passion, not its eradication, that is needed. How would we learn to submit to the authority of Christ if we had nothing to submit?
Resist the temptation to trifle with other people's feelings. It may be fun to "play with the fish," like a trout on a fly line, but it's cruel, it is dishonest, and it is dangerous.
The words "full of joy here and now" depend on the words "taken in the right spirit." You can't have one without the other. Taken in a spirit of trust, even loneliness contributes to the maturing of character, even the endurance of separation and silence and that hardest thing of all, uncertainty, can build in us a steady hope.
A woman's beauty should reside, according to the Apostle Peter, in the inmost center of her being, an "...imperishable ornament, a gentle, quiet spirit, which is of high value in the sight of God."
-Elisabeth Elliot
1 comment:
Thanks, Sarah! She is an amazing woman.
Also, I think there is misconception about the outworking of having a "gentle and quiet spirit". Sometimes women tell me they think this means they must be mousey and boring. In my opinion, that is not what it means at all. When my confidence in the LORD and what He is doing is where it should be, my inner spirit is peaceful and settled no matter what my external circumstances and this comes out in my actions and attitudes.
This only comes by my yielding my heart attitudes - all of them, the good, bad, and the ugly - to Him in brutal honesty to my Creator, the only God and Lover of my soul. I tattle to Him like a 5 year old about my bad/stubborn/unyielding attitudes (sometimes in detailed specificity) and give them to Him to unite my heart toward Him. He never seems to tire of my tattling and uses it to train me to have a united spirit yielded to Him in deep contented peacefulness knowing He is in control.
Some of my favorite passages are Ps 18, 23, 139. A recent new favorite: Isaiah 45.
When He wins in my heart, I win also and usually in ways I never imagined.
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