Buried

I’ve been slowly working my way through Elisabeth Elliot’s book, A Path Through Suffering. There are many lessons for me to grapple with in this book, but today I’m considering the idea that sometimes death is only part of the final step in surrender. Elizabeth shares the story of Lilias Trotter, the first missionary to Algiers. After seven years of enduring the harsh climate, Lilias returned to England utterly exhausted. “The doctor said her nerves and heart were worn by the strain of the battle and by the climate.” In addition to the physical sufferings, she had experienced firsthand the spiritual oppression of living in a spiritually dark land. What was her response?

While in the autumn months of England she noticed acorns falling on the road and “thought how they would never come to anything because they were only lying on the ground, not in it.” “She wrote of ‘a lovely sense of what it meant to be ‘buried with Christ’- not only ‘dead’ but ‘buried,’ put to silence in the grave; the ‘I can’t’ and the ‘I can,’ put to silence side by side in the stillness of ‘a grave beside Him’ with God’s seal on the stone, and His watch set that nothing but the risen life of Jesus may come forth.’” So Lilias renewed her commitment and took the words of John 12:24 to heart: “In truth, in very truth I tell you, a grain of wheat remains a solitary grain unless it falls into the ground and dies; but if it dies, it bears a rich harvest.”

So today, and probably for awhile, I’ll be contemplating just how to bury those “I can” and “I can’t” statements. In this new life of limitations there is great temptation to focus on all I can’t do and lament over what I used to be able to do. I look at the immensity of various tasks and wonder how I can effectively take part.

I am greatly encouraged by Lilias’ story, and I hope you will be too. She returned to Algiers, with all her limitations and with the enormity of the task before her and when she returned she experienced discouragement upon discouragement. “She was strengthened by the thought of Moses’ unanswered prayer to enter the Promised Land. Centuries later he was allowed to stand on the mountain there with Jesus Himself. And Elijah, because he was denied his request to die, experienced the glory of the fiery chariot when it was God’s time for him to go.” So too am I strengthened this day with the power of prayer that surpasses the “bounds of physical possibility,” just as the risen life of Christ breaks through those who are buried with Him.

(With exception to the quote from John 12:24, all quotes are taken from A Path Through Suffering: Discovering the Relationship Between God’s Mercy and Our Pain, Elisabeth Elliot Gren, Servant Publications, 1990.)