Elisabeth Elliot Encouragement

I receive a devotional each morning by Elisabeth Elliot from Gateway to Joy. I believe the devotionals are just small portions of things she’s written in various books. This morning’s was particularly encouraging.

We cannot protect the child we bring into the world. (”This, this is the victory of the grave; here is death’s sting, that it is not strong enough, our strongest wing,” wrote the poet Charlotte Mew. “But what of His who like a Father pitieth? His Son was also, once, a little thing….”) But we can bring him to the Cross, where all longings, all hopes and failures, all sin and sadness and pain and fear are gathered up in everlasting love and transformed for us forever into glory and beauty and Joy.

Later on she says this:

And the prisoners and exiles–they, too, are in his plan. “God has no problems,” Corrie ten Boom says, “only plans.” We suffer with them because they are members of the same Body, but our Christian faith enables us to look steadfastly and not hide our eyes, to pray earnestly and not despair, because Jesus commanded us: “Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”

These thoughts of Mrs. Elliot’s pointed me to the cross this morning and settled my heart. I often worry about what we’re missing in the training up of our children. I need to look to the cross. In this world that is so full of sin, the only answer is found in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not only the cross, but the empty tomb he once occupied. We have much hope in this world, because of the finished work of Christ. So, if I give my children Christ, teach them of Him, and plead with them to humble themselves before Him-then they’ll be prepared for all that the world will throw at them.