How Does the Musician Read the Rest?

I'm slowed down for awhile. I could feel it coming on for about a month and finally decided last weekend that I should go to the ER for the pain in my leg. Confirmed blood clot. The good news is that with a newer medication, I'm not as immobilized as I was ten years ago when I had a clot. The bad news is that we can't meet up and get our grands for a 10-day stay that we were all looking forward to next week. Bummer. :-(

None of us are exempt from trials and tribulations. My mother is having radiation treatment for a cancer on her ankle. Three appointments per week for six weeks. And a friend just had cancer surgery on her hand. If I took a few moments to think about it, I could go through the pews of our church and name many more friends who have toil and trouble in one form or another. Adam's Fall has brought suffering to us all.

As I was writing a card this morning to my friend who just had surgery, I tucked a little tract written by Elisabeth Elliot into the card. A long-time friend back home had sent it to me many moons ago, and God used it to speak encouragement into my heart. So much so that I had ordered a hundred copies to tuck into cards over the years.

I'd like to share its thought with you in hopes that God may use it to encourage you today as well. Elisabeth quotes the painter John Ruskin:

There is no music in a rest, but there is making of music in it. In our whole life-melody, the music is broken off here and there by 'rests,' and we foolishly think we have come to the end of time. God sends a time of forced leisure—sickness, disappointed plans, frustrated efforts—and makes a sudden pause in the choral hymn of our lives and we lament that our voices must be silent, and our part missing in the music which ever goes up to the ear of the Creator. How does the musician read the rest? See him beat time with unvarying count and catch up the next note true and steady, as if no breaking place had come between. Not without design does God write the music of our lives. But be it ours to learn the time and not be dismayed at the 'rests.' They are not to be slurred over, nor to be omitted, nor to destroy the melody, nor to change the keynote. If we look up, God Himself will beat time for us. With the eye on Him we shall strike the next note full and clear.

Disappointed, yes. Dismayed, no.
My music measure for now is a 'rest,' and the Master Musician will catch up the next note true and steady.

Image ~ Mrs. Meigs at the Piano Organ

Chase William Merritt, 1849-1916

public domain via WikiMedia Commons

Work is a Blessing

Domesticity - devoted to home duties and pleasures

Work is a blessing. God has so arranged the world that work is necessary, and He gives us hands and strength to do it. The enjoyment of leisure would be nothing if we had only leisure. It is the joy of work well done that enables us to enjoy rest, just as it is the experiences of hunger and thirst that make food and drink such pleasures.

~ Elisabeth Elliot, Discipline: The Glad Surrender

Painting ~ Soap Girl 1865, Maude Humphrey 1868-1940

Through Gates of Splendor

I had read the book many years ago and grew up hearing the account many, many times. Recently, we watched Through Gates of Splendor as a 35-minute documentary which told of the events leading up to the death of the five missionaries who were trying to bring the gospel to the Aucas in 1956 and how the Aucas were initially reached. The documentary was particularly interesting because it was narrated by Elisabeth Elliot herself as a young mother, based mostly on home-movie film footage and Life magazine photos.

I found the account of Elisabeth's and Rachel Saint's return to the Aucas to be a bit different than what I had understood it to be. My own misunderstanding, to be sure, but I had always envisioned these women tenaciously heading right back into the jungle, determined to do what their husbands had been thwarted in doing. Not exactly. The desire to reach the Aucas with the gospel message was, of course, their heartbeat, but how they ended up living in the village was more of God's direct intervention than that of their own sheer determination.

Once again I was reminded that it's all about God, not about us. It's not even about Elisabeth Elliott, as much as I am grateful for her life and writing. Neither is it about Rachel Saint, who lived with the Aucas until her death, translating the gospel into the Aucan language. Nor is it about Dayuma, the young Aucan woman who played a key role in bringing the gospel to her people.

God's purpose was to reach the Aucas, and Elisabeth, Rachel and Dayuma were simply willing instruments in the hands of the Redeemer. Dayuma's role in spreading the gospel among her own people was part of the story that I had somehow missed down through the years.

I do recommend the documentary, but you'll want to use discretion in its viewing. The Aucas are shown in their natural attire at that time, so there's nudity throughout. 

Being A Different Kind of Woman

The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, 

but the fact that I am a Christian makes me a different kind of woman.  

~ Elizabeth Elliot

Is It All You Do It For?

Stepping Heavenward, Elizabeth Prentiss, 1869

The title of this book caught my attention. It’s written in journal form, beginning with Katherine’s (Katie’s) 16^th birthday and follows her maturing into womanhood. This is one of Elisabeth Elliot's favorite books, and she writes, “This book is a treasure of godly and womanly wisdom, told with disarming candor and humility, yet revealing a deep heart’s desire to know God.”

A journal excerpt:

July 30 – I met Dr. Cabot [pastor] today, and could not help asking the question: “is it right for me to sing and play in company when all I do it for is to be admired?”

“Are you sure it is all you do it for?” he returned.

“Oh,” I said, “I suppose there may be a sprinkling of desire to entertain and please, mixed with the love of display.”

“Do you suppose that your love of display, assuming you have it, would be forever slain by your merely refusing to sing in company?”

“I thought that might give it a pretty hard blow,” I said, “if not its death blow.”

“Meanwhile, in punishing yourself you punish your poor innocent friends,” he said laughing. “No, child, go on singing; God has given you this power of entertaining and gratifying your friends. But pray, without ceasing, that you may sing from pure benevolence and not from pure self-love.”

“Why, do people pray about such things as that?” I cried.

“Of course they do. Why, I would pray about my little finger, if my little finger went astray.”

I looked at his little finger, but saw no signs of its becoming schismatic.

Sexual Purity: Moral Freedom

Continuing to work through my Bible study in the Seeking Him guide by Nancy Leigh DeMoss, and sharing a thought with you today. The topic is 'Sexual Purity: The Joy of Moral Freedom'.  As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the Enemy of all things good is intent on destroying all that reflects the goodness of God. Sexual desire is one of those battlefronts.

"For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality;  that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor,  not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.  ~ 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8

If immorality is so desirable, one wonders why there's such increasing intensity as people degenerate along that path. They become enslaved to it, in bondage to it, just as one in bondage to drugs must have more and more. It never satisfies, but they keep relentlessly pursuing it. It haunts them and oppresses them (and those they use). The Enemy of all things good has caught them in his trap, and they don't even realize it. They find fulfillment nowhere.

"There is dullness, monotony, sheer boredom in all of life when virginity and purity are no longer protected and prized. By trying to grab fulfillment everywhere, we find it nowhere."     ~ Elisabeth Elliot

In today's study, Nancy offers a checklist of safeguards for those of us pursuing moral freedom. I hope they're an encouragement to you.

• Recognize your potential for moral failure
• Realize that you don't have to give in.
• Resolve to be pure.
• Remove all bitterness.
• Restrain our fleshly desires.
• Reject anything that could lead you back into bondage.
• Run from every form of evil.
• Renew your mind with the Word of God.
• Recruit help.
• Remember the consequences.
• Refuse to remain in defeat and depression.
• Rely on the Holy Spirit.

~ from Seeking Him, Nancy Leigh DeMoss and Tim Grissom