The Best Thing

The best thing to do was pray steadily and wait patiently till God made the way plain.

Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity (Revell, 2002), p. 59.

Suppose you’re with a group of cross-country runners. The course is not clearly marked, but you have a trail guide who is showing you the way. This isn’t a race to see who finishes first, but simply a challenge of endurance, to see who can make it to the finish. If you run ahead of the trail guide, you are likely to end up off-course and may never make it to the finish. How embarrassing that would be! And worse, it could be life-threatening, especially if you were to get lost.

In this race of life, the Lord Jesus Christ is my trail guide. If I run ahead of Him, I stand a very good chance of getting lost, and then He has to lose precious time to go find me and put me back on course. So I’m far better off to keep patiently following Him, even if His pace seems a little slow.

℘ ℘ ℘ ℘ ℘ ℘ ℘ ℘ ℘

Elisabeth Elliot’s writing has greatly influenced my life, even as a grown married woman. I truly wish someone had introduced me to her works when I was a teenager, but I am learning that it is never too late to incorporate the principles she teaches: namely, that passion is not sinful and purity is not prudish. Nor are they mutually exclusive. You can have both.