We continue this week with excerpts from Passion and Purity with Elisabeth’s first mention of her meeting Jim Elliot.
I had been reading my Bible, I believe, quite faithfully, nearly every day through high school and college. Before that, if I did not always read it myself, I heard it read at home by my father both morning and evening. It took no specially profound understanding of it to know that I did not begin to measure up to its standards. As I grew into womanhood and began to learn what was in my heart I saw very clearly that, of all things difficult to rule, none were more so than my will and affections. They were unruly in the extreme, as the diary entries attest.
Bringing anything at all into order—a messy room, a wild horse, a recalcitrant child—involves some expenditure. Time and energy at least are required. Perhaps even labor, toil, sacrifice, and pain. The answer to the above prayer-the bringing of our unruly wills and affections into order-will cost us something.
Take my love-my God,
I pour At Thy feet its treasure store.
Francis Ridley Havergal
It is easy to sing a hymn along with the congregation in church. Many times I had sung that one, not knowing what it would come to mean to me. I do not say I sang it glibly, but my sincerity had to be proved somehow.
There was a student on campus whom I had been noticing more and more since that day in March of my junior year when I had met and talked with him. My brother Dave had been urging me to get acquainted with him ever since then, without much success. He and Dave were on the wrestling squad, so I went to a match, ostensibly to watch Dave. I found myself laughing with the crowd at Jim Elliot, the “India-rubber man,” who could be tied in knots but could not be pinned. I noticed Jim in theForeign Missions Fellowship-earnest, committed to missionary service, outspoken (especially to those who were not particularly concerned about missions). I noticed him standing in dining-hall lines with little white cards in his hand, memorizing Greek verbs or Scripture verses. I heard his name read out semester after semester in the honors convocation. Finally Dave invited Jim to come home to New Jersey with us for Christmas. We had some long, long talks after the family had gone to bed. The more Jim talked, the more I saw that he fitted the picture of what I hoped for in a husband. He loved to sing hymns, and he knew dozens by heart. He loved to read poetry, loved to read it aloud. He was a real man, strong, broadchested, unaffected, friendly, and I thought, very handsome. He loved God. That was the supreme dynamic of his life. Nothing else mattered much by comparison.
He was a Greek major, and so was I. After Christmas I began to hope that he would sit by me in class once in a while. He did. He sat by me often, even when at times he had to trip over other people to get the seat. Was it possible… ? Could he be interested … ? My hopes rose, but very timidly…
Each encounter strengthened the suspicion that I might be falling in love with this man. A delicious feeling, but not very sensible for a woman trying to steer a straight course for the mission field, which, I thought, was supposed to be Africa or the South Seas.
Precisely how did one pour at God’s feet the “treasure store” of one’s love? Well, I promised myself, I’ll find out when I really do fall in love. There’s no such involvement yet.
**Excerpt originally published in Passion and Purity, pp. 29-31, 33