When I wrote the piece on page one [Why Christian’s Suffer—last week’s devotional], I wasn’t suffering, nor was anyone close to me that I knew of. Today a few more paragraphs have been asked for because of a change in format. My thoughts have been full of my mother. A bad fall a couple of weeks ago, headlong onto the sidewalk, had resulted only in a broken tooth, it seemed. Alarming symptoms developed last week. Today she is in a hospital in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, following cranial surgery.
Tomorrow I will see her. What will I say, I, who know next to nothing of physical suffering? I can’t speak firsthand of that, but never mind. The Lord took on Himself all of our pains, so His word stands sure of all of them. I will read her the piece on page one if she can listen, and ask the Spirit of God to cheer her. She has known the Lord and loved His word for about seventy years. He will not fail her now.
Yesterday as I prayed for her I thought of the words, “In Him we live and move and have our being.” Why yes, I thought—even now, in her weakness and confusion, lying there with head swathed in bandages, bewildered about what has happened, where she is and why, Mother lives (however tenuously), moves (however weakly), and has her being in Christ. Nothing has changed with Him. He holds her in His hands, the hands that were wounded for her. He will not forget her or let her go. She is safe.
I fished out of my files a letter I had from a little boy, with a picture of himself—such a sweet, wistful face. “My grandmother has a brain tumor,” he wrote, “and only has about six months to live. I’m really upset. Could you help me about this?”
How to help a child trust God in the face of fathomless mysteries? I couldn’t explain the thing. I could only tell him that the Lord loves his grandmother more than he does. He loved Daniel and Joseph and Stephen and His own son, the Lord Jesus, and He let some terrible things happen to them because He had wonderful things in mind that were beyond men’s most shining dreams. To go into a den of fierce lions, to be sold into slavery and then imprisoned, to be pelted with rocks or nailed to a cross—why? God gave us explanations for those terrible things. You can find them in the Bible. He gives us hints about things like even a dear grandmother’s tumor. “Make your requests known to me, my child,” He says. “I’m listening. I love you. I love her. Then trust me to do the very best thing. In the end, you’ll see—it’s better than shining dreams.” You must wait patiently for the Lord. He will strengthen your heart.
**Excerpt originally published in the Jan/Feb 1984 Elisabeth Elliot Newsletter.