We conclude our series of excerpts from “Passion and Purity” this week. We encourage you to read it in its fullness to learn how Elisabeth and Jim’s relationship unfolded through love, sacrifice and waiting on God.
Thou shalt know Him when He comes
Not by any din of drums,
Nor the vantage of His airs,
Nor by anything He wears,
Neither by His crown nor His gown.
For His presence known shall be
By the holy harmony
Which His coming makes in thee.
In the days following our talk at the Lagoon I prayed for that holy harmony. It seemed impossible that the torrent of passion could be brought into the calm river of God’s purposes for Jim or for me, but I prayed for it anyway.
We had sat on the grass by the lake and talked of how each had agonized over the question of singleness, knowing that our chances of finding a mate in missionary work would be strictly limited. Jim said he had no intention of looking for one. He had found the one he wanted.
“If I marry, I know who it’ll be. That is, of course, if she’ll have me.” He flashed his famous smile. I smiled in reply. He hastened to add, “But I’m not asking. I can’t do that, Bett, and you’ll have to understand that. I can’t ask you to marry me, and I can’t ask you to commit yourself to anything whatever. I can’t even ask you to wait. I’ve given you and all my feelings for you to God. He’ll have to work out whatever He wants.”
Could He? My mind was full of questions. I thanked God for a man who put Him first. I could not have gotten terribly excited about one whose spiritual hunger did not parallel my own. But Jim was not just spiritual. He was very physical. He had a wrestler’s build-strong neck, barrel chest, muscular arms and legs. He had brown hair, fair skin, blue eyes, beautiful teeth, and a good square jaw.
“I’m hungry for you, Bett,” he had said. He was not one to beat about the bush. “We’re alike in our desire for God. I’m glad for that. But we’re different, too. I’ve got the body of a man, and you’ve got the body of a woman, and frankly, I want you. But you’re not mine.”
Not his. God’s. That much was clear. But what was God going to do about all this? Was He interested in the plight of two college kids? Had our cause perhaps escaped His notice? Would He bother with us, when He was busy with who knew how many worlds?
Who had gauged the waters in the palm of his hand,
or with its span set limits to the heavens?
Who has held all the soil of earth in a bushel,
or weighed the mountains on a balance
and the hills on a pair of scales? …
Do you not know, have you not heard,
were you not told long ago,
have you not perceived ever since the world began,
that God sits throned on the vaulted roof of earth,
whose inhabitants are like grasshoppers? …
Lift up your eyes to the heavens;
consider who created it all,
led out their host one by one
and called them all by their names;
through his great might, his might and power,
not one is missing.
Not a star, not a planet, not a meteorite or a quasar, no, not even a black hole or a black dwarf is missing. God made them. He knows their names, knows exactly where they belong. Can He keep track of us?
We conclude our series of excerpts from “Passion and Purity” this week. We encourage you to read it in its fullness to learn how Elisabeth and Jim’s relationship unfolded through love, sacrifice and waiting on God.
**Excerpt originally published in Passion and Purity, pp. 51-53