Laudable Linkage

Posted on March 9, 2024 by Barbara Harper

Here are a few thought-provoking posts from the last week:

7 Blessings Older Saints Offer the Church, HT to Challies. “My grandparents, with their godly example, aren’t alone. Their example of faithfulness is afforded to every saint who lingers on this earth into old age. In fact, older Christians have some of the most important lessons to teach the local church today.”

Be the Church Member You Want Your Church to Have. HT to Challies. “Paul addresses the Romans who are having some disputes, and he starts with this glorious phrase: ‘so far as it depends on you’ (Rom 12:18). In other words, he deflects the attention away from ‘those people’ and shines the light on ‘you’. Paul knows that focusing on ‘those people’ is a dead end street. You can’t do anything, not really, about anyone else. But do you know who you can affect? YOU!”

Visible Grace in Disagreements, HT to Challies. “Here are three things we should strive for: Christians who are willing to confront but aren’t eager for controversy. Christians who pursue a gentle revival, not a holy war. Christians who eavesdrop on Jesus’ intercession instead of joining Satan’s accusations.”

Do You Want My Opinion? HT to Challies. “In the past week, I’ve had two experiences that confirm a need to get a better grip on how I share what I think about current events.”

Elisabeth Elliot, My Dear Mother. This was a blog by Elisabeth Elliot’s daughter, Valerie, and this particular post was written just after Elisabeth passed away in 2015. I don’t remember if I have seen it before, but it was shared this week on the Elisabeth Elliot Quotes Facebook page.

Doesn’t a Library-Themed Hotel sound ideal for a book-lover’s vacation? It’s expensive, and it’s located in NYC, not a place I have any desire to go to. But maybe this idea will catch on with more accessible places and prices. HT to Dan Balow.

“A saint in this life is like gold in the ore, much dross of infirmity cleaves to him, yet we love him for the grace that is in him. A saint is like a fair face with a scar: we love the beautiful face of holiness, though there be a scar in it. The best emerald has its blemishes, the brightest stars their twinklings, and the best of the saints have their failings. You that cannot love another because of his infirmities, how would you have God love you?” Thomas Watson

Review: Being Elisabeth Elliot

Posted on January 25, 2024 by Barbara Harper

Being Elisabeth Elliot is the second of a two-part biography of Elisabeth by Ellen Vaughn. The first was Becoming Elisabeth Elliot (linked to my review).

I’ve written more about who Elisabeth was in that first review and her influence in my life here, so I won’t go into all that again.

Vaughn’s was the authorized biography: she had access to all Elisabeth’s remaining journals and many letters.

After spending months agonizing over whether to leave or stay in South America, Elisabeth finally felt God would have her go home and be a writer. This volume begins with Elisabeth’s return to the US from Ecuador in 1963 with her young daughter, Valerie.

But then she struggled with what to write, now that she had the time and freedom to.

Plus she was processing much of what had happened in her life so far. Christian literature and missions meetings were filled with victorious tales which she had not experienced. “She railed against the image-conscious habits of the Evangelical Machine, whose every story must end with glorious conversion and coherent happy endings, lest God look bad” (p. 272). She rethought some of her legalistic upbringing. She found that often, God’s ways were inscrutable. He couldn’t be boxed in, figured out, or predicted.

But she found Him trustworthy nonetheless. He may not respond the way we think He should. But He proves Himself good, wise, and holy.

Her private musings during this time period might be shocking and disturbing to some. But I think many of us ask some of the same questions at points in life.

In her first book after the initial ones about her husband, his friends, and their ministry trying to reach the Waorani tribe (then known as Aucas), she wrote a fictionalized account of her experiences in No Graven Image. The book was not well-received. Many misunderstood that the graven image in question was their man-made perceptions of what God should be like.

Vaughn goes on to tell of Elisabeth’s struggles with writing, her widening speaking ministry, her challenges raising Valerie, her surprising second marriage, her husband’s agonizing death from cancer, and her third marriage to Lars Gren. She mentions how some of her books came into being, especially the first few. I would have liked to learn more about the rest of her books.

I was surprised how often Elisabeth said in her journals that she never sought a platform, never wanted to get in the middle of a public debate on thorny issues (especially femininity in a feminist word). But she felt as God gave her openings, she needed to share His truth.

Though she came across as self-assured, she struggled with self-doubt.

I was surprised to learn that she dearly wanted to write a great work of fiction.

From the time Elisabeth Elliot returned to the United States from Ecuador in the early ’60s, she had devoured classic and modern literature that evoked the human condition against the backdrop of God’s mysterious universe. She wanted to write great novels. She wanted to engage and stir urbane New Yorkers. She wanted to call into being essential human truths through the power of story. She wanted pages that she had written to stir people’s hearts in the same way she was so deeply stirred, her heart and eyes lifted up, by well-crafted literature, visual art, and music (p. 253).

She attempted this, but ultimately felt it was beyond her. Many of us are glad God led her as He did, writing nonfiction for Christian women.

Much of what I would have liked to know more about was lost due to Lars burning “most of her journals from the years of their marriage, a choice he now regrets” (p. 274).

I started this book with reticence because I had heard negative things about it. I thought Vaughn’s writing was engaging and readable. I agree that she shared some things from Elisabeth’s journals about her physical relationship with her second husband, Addison, that would have been best left out. I agree, too, that she inserted herself into the narrative more than she should have. Vaughn’s husband died of cancer right after she wrote about Addison Leitch’s death, and having traveled this journey with Elisabeth through her journals was a help to her. But this would have been better placed in an appendix or afterword. Plus she “argues” with Elisabeth in an imaginary conversation as to whether or not she should have married Lars. In various other places, we’re aware of the author in ways we should not have been.

I appreciated Vaughn’s difficulty in trying to tell the truth about Elisabeth as best she could. I can’t imagine filtering through all the material available to her and trying to discern what to share and what to leave out. Though overall she covers the same ground as Lucy S. R. Austen in her biography, they bring out many different things as well.

Elisabeth never claimed to be perfect and would never wanted to have been portrayed as such. She was more complicated than many knew.

The very last page of the book tells about the Elisabeth Elliot Foundation, which is placing all her writings and radio programs in one spot. At the very bottom, the page says the foundation’s mission is to give “Hope in Suffering, Restoration in Conflict, and Joy and Obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ.” I thought this remarkably echoed Elisabeth’s ministry as well.

Review: Elisabeth Elliot, A Life

Posted on December 5, 2023 by Barbara Harper

I’ve mentioned many times that I considered Elisabeth Elliot my “mentor from afar” for most of my adult life. I discovered her books in college, four decades ago, beginning with Through Gates of Splendor, Shadow of the Almighty, and The Journals of Jim Elliot. I’ve read almost all her books ever since, some of them several times, as well as her newsletters.

Most of you know that Elisabeth was the wife of Jim Elliot, one of five missionaries killed when trying to reach a tribe in Ecuador then known as “Aucas” (now known by their name for themselves, Waorani). A few years later, Elisabeth, her young daughter Valerie, and Rachel Saint, sister of one of the other missionaries, were invited to live with the Waorani. After writing Through Gates of Splendor about “Operation Auca” and the five missionaries, then her husband’s biography, and several articles, Elisabeth began to feel God called her into a ministry of writing. She and Valerie came back to the USA, where Elisabeth spent decades writing, speaking, and teaching.

Elisabeth’s public ministry ended in 2004 when her dementia began to make travel and speaking impossible. She passed away in 2015 at the age of 88. She’s regarded as one of the most influential Christian women of the last 100 years.

It was only a matter of time before biographers started telling her story. In Elisabeth Elliot: A Life, Lucy S. R. Austen harmonizes Elisabeth’s public writing with the journals and letters Austen had access to, which I feel is the strength of this book.

Elisabeth never put herself on a pedestal. She was quite honest about her faults and foibles. Austen takes care to present Elisabeth realistically, not idealistically.

However, I felt that Austen often sat in judgment on Elisabeth’s writing, criticizing such things as her approach to discerning God’s will in her early years, Jim’s behavior as they dated, the difference between what Elisabeth wrote in her journals and what she wrote publicly thirty years later, and so on. I have questions marks and notes of “author judgment” in several margins.

I knew much about Elisabeth’s earlier life from her books and writing. I was looking forward to learning more about what happened after she came back to the USA. But Elisabeth’s earlier life takes up two-thirds of the book, with her last fifty-two years filling only a third. That may be due to several factors: people’s interest in her missionary career; a number of questions and issues about that time; the decreasing number of family letters sent. And then, a lot of the narrative about her time in the States reads like lists of where she traveled and spoke, along with whom she visited and who visited her.

I was heartened to see some of her questions and struggles that emphasized that she was in many ways an ordinary Christian woman dealing with some of the same issues we all do. I was sad to hear of serious issues in her second and particularly third marriages.

Elisabeth seemed, by all accounts, to be a classic introvert. I was sad to see that introversion was thought to be unspiritual in her early life and that she fought against it rather than seeing it as the way God made her.

I was surprised to read that she thought speaking was not her main ministry and, in fact, took away from her writing ministry. I’m thankful to have heard her speak in person twice.

Her views on many things changed and solidified over the years, as happens with most of us. Her journals and sometimes her letters were ways of processing her thoughts. I wouldn’t be too alarmed by some of the views she seemed to hold or wrestled with along the way.

As it happened, I was midway through the book when I turned on the replay of Elisabeth’s radio program, Gateway to Joy, on BBN Radio one morning. She was doing a series called “Jungle Diaries,” reading from her journals of her time in Ecuador. She said she had not looked at them in forty years. She commented that people think she “has it all together,” but her diaries assured that she did not then, and she still did not claim to.

She also commented that her “theology has been developed” since those writings, but what she wrote was raw and real and honest. Then she mentioned that she was shocked to read of her desire to go to the Aucas. She “had no recollection of wanting to go to the Aucas, certainly not that soon after Jim died” (“Jungles Diaries #1:Journal Beginnings,” aired October 16, 2023).

I was quite surprised to hear her say that, as her books indicated that she strongly wanted to go. But then I thought about my own life forty years ago. I was four years married and would soon be expecting my first child. I remember where I worked, where we went to church, who our friends were. But there’s more I don’t remember than I do.

So I feel that Austen often made too much of the differences between what Elliot wrote over a span of forty or more years. But I think Austen tried to be faithful with the material she had.

In writing circles, we’re often told that we might have a perfectly fine manuscript that may be rejected because a similar book has just been published. For that reason, I was surprised to see Austen’s biography come out in-between the two parts of Ellen Vaughn’s “authorized” biography. Perhaps the publishers felt there was sufficient interest in Elisabeth to warrant two biographies of her published so close together. If so, I think they were right.

But I hope sometime someone writes a simple biography of Elisabeth, not analyzing or explaining or annotating, but just telling her story.

One of the main take-aways from listening to or reading about Elisabeth is that her supreme desires were to know and obey God. She was no-nonsense, yet she had a sense of humor. She was sentimental, but she wasn’t unfeeling. She wasn’t perfect, and she wouldn’t say this, but I think she went further than many of us in her spiritual journey.

(Updated to add: I thought I’d share a couple of other, more positive reviews from friends I know and trust: Ann’s is here, and Michele’s is here.)

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)

Laudable Linkage

Posted on October 20, 2023 by Barbara Harper

I didn’t think I’d have a Laudable Linkage since dealing with my husband’s surgery this week and not having much time on the computer. But I did have a draft started and a couple of links to add, so here we are!

You Are not Invisible to God. HT to Challies. “My daughter, in her power chair changes how I look at others. People once invisible to me, catch my eye now. I can see them with my heart.” I love the example shared here.

The Joy of Knowledge, HT to Challies. “The more we learn about God, the more we can appreciate what we see of him in the scriptures and in the world. Becoming more and more familiar with the details of his personality, his character, his likes and dislikes will allow us to see him more clearly and love him more deeply. Some may object that this is just head knowledge and relationships are more than that. That’s true. But they’re not less than that.”

5 Simple Ways to Teach Faith to Your Children. “Thankfully, long before Sunday school and professional Christian workers, God provided simple guidelines to help parents raise their children in the faith. This model has worked for centuries—even millennia—as Old Testament believers passed on their faith to their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, down through the ages and into today.”

10 Ways Your Pastor Wishes You Would Pray for Him. This is good any time, but especially now since October is Pastor Appreciation Month.

Book Club for Kids: No Stress Fun with Stories and Friends. “Since my student teaching days many moons ago, book club has been my favorite way of engaging kids with others and with story. The benefits include the schoolish things you would expect (comprehension, vocabulary, ability to articulate opinion, etc.), but they also reach far beyond that. A call to responsibility, a sense of belonging, and a stirring of compassion are all wrapped up in the wonderful package deal that is book club. I’ve seen these benefits come to fruition in both classroom and homeschool settings, with peers, with mixed aged groups, and even with multi-generational groups.” Love these ideas!

An Update o n Lars Gren, Elisabeth Elliot’s third husband. That article also referenced Forget Me Not: Loving God’s Aging Children, a pamphlet Elisabeth wrote when her mother faced dementia.

If you like Christian fiction set in WW2, I’m giving away a couple of books in that category here.

Laudable Linkage

Posted on August 5, 2023 by Barbara Harper

There is so much good reading online. Here are a few that stood out to me. It’s probably a good time for my occasional reminder that linking to any source does not imply 100% endorsement of everything on that site.

Why’d the Pigs Have to Die? HT to Challies. I’ve often wondered about this, from when Jesus cast a legion of demons out of one man, and the demons went into a herd of pigs and destroyed them. I appreciate the answer.

The Secret Meaning of YHWH, HT to Knowable Word. “I think God is not pleased by the herculean efforts some people go to look so hard for hidden meanings—whether linguistic or allegorical or what have you—that they miss the simple point of what he said.”

What Does It Look Like to Serve as Others as Jesus Served? “What does it look like to be a servant to my family, to say ‘My life for yours’? As a person of faith, I look to Jesus as my example of a servant’s heart.”

One of the Weirdest Articles I’ve Ever Written. Mike Leake uses and absurd example to illustrate the point that “Just because a word means something somewhere doesn’t mean it carries that same meaning elsewhere.” We can end up with this kind of extreme interpretation in Bible word studies when we “find all the uses of that word and then you shove each of those passages and all of their meaning into the Scripture you’re studying.”

Ambassadors for Marriage, HT to Challies. “It’s one thing for me, a 50-something, Christian mother of four, grandmother of two, to say, ‘Yes, get married! Don’t wait for the ‘perfect’ person or perfect timing! Don’t wait to get the whole rest of your life in order first! Marriage is great—it’s totally worth it!’ But it’s another thing entirely coming from someone who is under the age of 30.”

What It Feels Like, HT to Challies. A pastor’s experience with depression.

Shepherding Children Through Exposure to Pornography, HT to Challies. It’s sad that such an article is necessary, but these days, it’s too easy to come across pornography unexpectedly and then be drawn in.

God is Near: Certain Comforts for Moms, HT to Challies. “In my role as the Director of Children’s Ministries at my church, I’m privy to the thoughts of many mothers. As moms think about ‘back to school,’ one emotion keeps bubbling to the surface over and over. I hear it in their voices, in the questions they ask, and the conversations they have. It’s not a pretty emotion. It’s one that can sometimes paralyze us. Fear.”

Your Rights as a Christian in a Public School in 2023, HT to Challies.

The most recent newsletter from the Elisabeth Elliot Foundation shared that the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C is hosting an exhibit called Through Gates of Splendor: The Elisabeth Elliot Story through the end of 2023. I’d love to see it, but I doubt I’ll get to D.C. before the end of this year. Thankfully, this article says they’re working on a traveling exhibit. The newsletter shared this video of opening day:

To Be a Clod

Posted on February 5, 2023 by Barbara Harper

Amy Carmichael was one of Elisabeth Elliot’s heroes, and both women are heroes of mine.

Recently a newsletter from the Elisabeth Elliot Foundation closed with this poem by Amy Carmichael, which Elisabeth had quoted in one of her radio broadcasts:

From prayer that asks that I may be
Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,
From fearing when I should aspire,
From faltering when I should climb higher,
From silken self, O Captain, free
Thy soldier who would follow Thee.

From subtle love of softening things,
From easy choices, weakenings,
Not thus are spirits fortified,
Not this way went the Crucified;
From all that dims Thy Calvary,
O Lamb of God, deliver me.

Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay,
The hope no disappointments tire,
The passion that will burn like fire;
Let me not sink to be a clod;
Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God.

—Amy Carmichael

I first read this poem as a young adult. I may have been in college or a newlywed when I first read Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur by Frank Houghton. I couldn’t help but be inspired by Amy’s fervor, courage, and determination to follow God wherever He led her. She became a missionary to India. It might be more correct to say she made India her home for the rest of her life.

There’s something about youth that is inherently passionate. Most young people have a burning desire to make their lives count, to make a difference, to further a cause bigger than themselves.

But after several decades, we tend to get more settled, don’t we?

Being settled isn’t always a bad thing. Though I continue to learn and grow, I am more settled in my convictions, less like “children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Ephesians 4:14).

I’m more settled in my self-image. I’ve never been super-model material, but I am okay with that now.

I’m more settled in my marriage. After forty-three years, my husband and I know each other pretty well. We’ve worked out our differences and learned to complement (and compliment) each other. We still find plenty to talk about.

But I hope I never become settled in the sense of complacency in my faith and walk with God, to let “easy choices” of “silken self” give way to the “subtle love of softening things.” We can be more inclined to do so as our physical capacity begins to decline.

I’ve often wondered at Amy’s use of the word “clod” in the next-to-last line. After the beautiful phrasing in the rest of the poem, “clod” seems like a jolt, like stubbing your toe on a rock. I would guess Amy probably did that on purpose.

A quick look in the dictionary shows that a clod is a lump, usually of dirt or clay. But it’s also a term used for an oaf or dolt. Amy may have meant the word in the latter sense. But I like to think of it as a lump, especially since she spoke of sinking to be a clod.

I’m not a soil specialist; I am not even a gardener. But when I think of a clod, it seems like it has three possibilities for its future.

First, it could erode. Wind and rain could chip off tiny bits of it until nothing is left.

It could get harder due to the sun beating down on it while it just sits there.

Or it could be tilled, broken up into useful soil again.

The last thought brings to mind Hosea 10:12: “Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the LORD, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.”

The ways God has used me have changed over the years with age, health issues, life circumstances. I can’t (and don’t even desire to) do things I once did.

But that was true of Amy, too. After a fall, she became an invalid for the last twenty years of her life. How she ministered to others changed. But she still followed hard after God in her heart, met with people as she was able, wrote books, sent notes of encouragement to her coworkers and inhabitants of the orphanage and hospital on the Dohnavur complex.

Of course, age and declining abilities are not the only contributors to cloddishness. It’s easy at any age to settle into a cozy lump of inertia.

May God give us hearts soft and pliable to His leading and will rather than soft to comfort and pleasures.

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)

Laudable Linkage

Posted on September 3, 2022 by Barbara Harper

I’ve been saying for weeks that I was behind on my blog reading. I’m almost caught up now, as evidenced by this long list of good reads.

Imagine Reading The Lord of the Rings the Way You Read the Bible, HT to Challies. “The aim of the story is really to sweep you away in the narrative, to carry you along in a story in which you are not the starring character but in which the idea is to fall in love with other characters. That’s how epic stories are meant to be read—not as tiny little morality tales, but as horizon-busting, eye-bugging, world-broadening, even life-shaping experiences.

Sometimes I Struggle With the Bible, HT to Challies. “I relate to what Mark Twain allegedly said, that ‘it ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me; it’s the parts that I do understand.’ It is comforting to know that one of my personal heroes, C.S. Lewis, shared similar feelings about the more perplexing parts of the Bible.”

I Should. . . “When we’re here, sighing over “shoulds” that overwhelm, our brain space ends up reading more like a to-do list than an ongoing conversation with God. We spend less time listening to God, and more time just asking him to help us get enough done today. The words of Jesus in Luke 10:42 strike a chord when the shoulds start to drive our days.”

Harmony of the Gospels. “When you carefully read the four Gospels, you will inevitably . . . encounter what might appear to be discrepancies or contradictions between the Gospels. How should you approach apparent contradictions? The following four starting points will help readers of the Gospels approach apparent contradictions in a helpful way.”

Is Your Gospel an Urban Legend? HT to Challies. “If you talk a big game about ‘the gospel,’ but don’t live like it’s true, the people you do life with will begin to suspect you don’t actually believe it. Worse yet, they may begin to disbelieve it themselves.”

Intersectionality and My Adoptive Family, HT to Challies. “If our family took these ideas seriously — as serious proponents intend — they would suffocate our love, steal our joy, and destroy my family. Intersectionality brings the division of mother against child and son against father in very different ways than Christ does.”

The Purpose of Discipline. “God gives us His grace during seasons of discipline so that we come to know Him more deeply. His desire is for us to know Him increasingly and intimately.”

4 Truths for Your Insecure Moments. “The next time you feel insecure, remind yourself that the parts of you that make you unique are the precise parts God wants to use to fulfill his purpose through you.”

I Didn’t Want to Go to Church, HT to Challies. “Recently it took everything within me to drag myself to church (for Wednesday night Bible study). My body was tired, my mind exhausted, and my heart fatigued. Further, it meant bringing both children who, for one reason or another, always decide to act wild on those nights. Long story short, I went to church that evening.”

First Friday Prayers; Galatians 1:24. Lauren takes every first Friday of the month to share how we can convert Scripture into prayer. This time an overlooked phrase from Galatians packs a big punch.

Living With a Legacy. The Elisabeth Elliot Foundation newsletter referenced a nice article in World Magazine about Valerie, Elisabeth’s daughter, growing up with the legacy of Jim and Elisabeth (I can see the article on my phone but not on my computer. World only allows a few views before hiding their articles behind a paywall).

These verses grabbed my attention when I was in another part of 1 Timothy 6. Don’t they sound just like the spirit of our age? May we share right words with a right heart.

Laudable Linkage

Posted on July 2, 2022 by Barbara Harper

Here are some of the good reads found this week.

Four Compelling Reasons I Am Pro-Life, HT to Challies. I can echo just about all this. I’d add to the science section that the DNA of an embryo or fetus is separate from its mother’s. So an unborn baby is not just part of the mother’s body.

Life Is Precious, HT to Challies. “Are children a limit on personal autonomy? Yes. There’s no getting around it. They take resources. They need help, care, support, food, time, energy, and the list goes on and on. They need everything supplied to them for a long time. And is there a better way to use autonomy than this?”

Whose Choice? HT to Challies. “In 1973 I was 19 years old and a sophomore in college when the Supreme Court decided the Roe vs Wade case and legalized abortion. Honestly, however, I never expected the Court’s landmark decision to affect me personally.”

Tell God the Unvarnished Story. “Though we profess that God is all-seeing and all-knowing, that he understands not merely the actions of our hands and the thoughts of our minds but even the intentions of our hearts, still we sometimes feel as if we need to hold back from telling him all that we have thought, all that we have done, all that we have desired. Yet if we are to confess our sins before him, we need to confess them all, for he knows them anyway.”

Finding Family, HT to Challies. “God’s family is a precious thing, bound by wine and bread instead of blood and resemblance. Its members don’t dress alike, share a uniform culture or a common language. But whether it be in a building or a living room, whether through candles and liturgy or guitars and blue jeans, whenever believers gather, we belong to each other. And wherever two or more of us come together, Jesus is there.”

When the Mob Shows Up the Monday After Roe, HT to Challies. “Using umbrellas and masks to shield their identities from security cameras, they smashed almost every ground-floor window on the side of the building that hadn’t yet been boarded up and covered the building in vile graffiti aimed specifically at Christians.”

These posts are a few years old, but they were just shared on the Elisabeth Elliot Quotes Facebook page recently: Lar’s and Elisabeth’s Love Story and Elisabeth Elliot’s Final Days.

If You Find Listening to Sermons Boring, Try This, HT to Challies. “During my lifetime I reckon I’ve heard about 4,000 sermons. Often I have been challenged, uplifted, provoked, transformed. Sadly, other times, I have been bored.”

On the Supreme Court Decision to Overturn Roe v. Wade. A look at the legal arguments.

Happy 4th to my fellow Americans! It’s nice that it made for a long weekend this year.

Devotedly, The Love Story of Jim and Elisabeth Elliot

Posted on February 17, 2021 by Barbara Harper

If you’ve read here long, you know Elisabeth Elliot is a heroine of mine, a mentor from afar.

If you’re not familiar with Elisabeth, her husband and four of his colleagues were killed by a tribe they were trying to reach in the Ecuadorian jungle in 1956. She told the men’s stories in Through Gates of Splendor. Then, a few years later, she and her young daughter and the sister of one of the men went to live with the tribe in the jungle. A few years later, Elisabeth brought her daughter back to the US and became an author and speaker.

Jim and Elisabeth’s love story is unusual because they both thought God was going to send them to the mission field single. Jim was Elisabeth’s brother’s roommate in college and spent one Christmas vacation at their home. Then they had several classes together and began to study together.

They were different in personality. Jim was outgoing and spoke freely and easily (a little too freely sometimes). “The same bold, aggressive temperament that served him well as a daring disciple of Christ could sometimes come across as harsh and abrupt, even meddling, especially when dealing with a woman” (p. 258). Elisabeth was intellectual and reserved. But they thought alike on many subjects and began to find themselves drawn to each other.

Elisabeth seemed willing to take this development as from the Lord much sooner than Jim was. He had taken to heart Matthew 19:12 about some making themselves “eunuchs” for the kingdom of God (remaining single, unattached) and 1 Corinthians 7 about people being better able to serve God without distraction if they are single. He had given other guys in college a hard time about dating. He knew God was calling him to a pioneering field which would include rough living conditions. He didn’t feel he could ask a wife into that situation.

On top of everything else, he wrestled in his journal with the thought that if he loved a woman, it would mean that Jesus wasn’t enough for him. Somehow he missed that God Himself said “It is not good for man to be alone” when He created woman.

But for him, the thought of being romantically involved was a complete paradigm shift. It wasn’t something he could change his mind about in a short time. Plus, as they both graduated from college, each was not sure where God would have them. They worked at different jobs and helped in different ministries until they both felt led to go to Ecuador.

Elisabeth had told their love story in Passion and Purity and used it as a springboard to talk with young people about dating issues. She gave her letters and journals to her daughter, Valerie, to go through “when she had time.”

As a mother of eight, Valerie only recently had time. After reading the letters and journals and rereading her mother’s books, she felt she needed to share her parents’ love story. There was too much to copy entirely, so Lifeway helped her decide what to share. The result is Devotedly, The Personal Letters and Love Story of Jim and Elisabeth Elliot.

Valerie tells the story, interspersing the narrative with excerpts from her parents’ letters and journals. At times she adds a word of explanation, a little further insight, her thoughts on different points, or how her parents influenced her own story.

We’re so used to hearing the mature Elisabeth, who did most of her writing and speaking after decades of walking with the Lord. It’s interesting to read her young adult thoughts.

They spent a great deal of their relationship apart, so they got to know each other through letters. They went through the same difficulties as everyone else, with one person taking something the wrong way, the other having to explain, etc. They had no problem taking each other to task when they disagreed, but they did it as kindly as they could.

But mostly they encouraged each other to draw close to God and be and do all He wanted them to.

When they struggled with whether they should even be corresponding, they concluded that “what they shared together, even knowing the possibility they would spend their lifetimes apart, was more than worth it” (p. 42).

Valerie says they handled their love “with extraordinary sacredness” and “modeled—not perfectly, but persistently—the way God intends us to handle love, steward it, and keep it continually under His guidance” (pp. xiv-xv).

It’s interesting (and fun) to note the change in Jim’s writing from wrestling to acceptance that his love for Elisabeth was from God. He found that these two loves enriched each other rather than detracting from each other.

A few other thoughts that stood out to me:

Valerie noted that In the earliest pages of her mother’s journals, the words “though punctuated, of course, with the typical cares and crises of any young woman’s life—would never shift from this due-north orientation. God was first; God was supreme; God was all” (p. 1).

I thought this principle was a good one: comparing Christian life to a railroad, Jim wrote about decisions, “A block signal—a crisis—is lighted only where there is a special need. I may not always be in sight of a ‘go’ light, but sticking to the tracks will take me where the next one is” (p. 109).

Though we consider both Elliots stalwart examples of faith today, they each had their discouragements. Valerie wrote, “When you hear my mother at twenty-two saying she feels ‘useless’ and ‘fearful’ and ‘ashamed,’ recall what she went on to become in life by God’s grace and power. Think what our Father is capable of doing, encouraging you to press into Him, as she did, for His glory” (p. 66). As Elisabeth “grew older in Christ,” she realized she enjoyed “having the floor” and saw her tendency to want to “have the last word” and “straighten people out.” “She could be cut to the quick at times by her own insensitivity towards others who were speaking to her, and she wanted to become more gracious to those who didn’t have their words or facts straight” (p. 104).

Elisabeth had a nice singing voice and was often asked to sing in meetings. She wrote:

Oh, sometimes I wonder if I should not abstain from singing altogether until I know that Christ is my motive. Truly I do desire that my voice, as well as my life and will, be wholly given to His praise. But the flesh is ever with me—it manifests itself in the most singular forms sometimes. I discover that self-effacement, springing wholly from selfish motives, taints my very highest aspirations to act of God’s glory. So I am driven once again out of myself, for I am all unprofitable. . . I am but a branch, and without Thee can do nothing (pp. 138-139)

In Becoming Elisabeth Elliot, Ellen Vaughn mentions almost in passing an article someone had written proposing that perhaps Jim’s strong friendships with other men, his aversion to marriage, and his long wrestling over his relationship with Elisabeth meant that perhaps he was really homosexual at heart. One can’t read much of his writing without rendering such a possibility ridiculous. He wrote often of struggling against lustful thoughts, even more so the closer they got to their wedding. After one such entry, Valerie noted, “Let’s not pretend that my father was above the temptation. Yet, in response to it, he did what all godly men (and women) must do when accosted by strong, unholy thoughts. He called them out, considered it war, and made impassioned pleas that God would be his strength to endure” (p. 164). Even before, his teenage relationship with girls “warned me that my affections go out very easily and are jealously tenacious. Recognizing this fact, that I would lose my heart at every turn if I didn’t discipline myself carefully, I withdrew from dating and even close associations with girls whom I knew attracted me, or to whom I was somehow attractive” (p. 53).

Jim also wrestled with feeling inferior to Elisabeth and feeling “I can never be all she ought to have in a husband” (p. 192).

So we see that neither of them was perfect. That’s an encouragement to me, because I’m not, either. I wrestle with some of the same things they did. Sanctification is a lifelong process. But God’s grace is available every step of the way.

We miss a lot by not writing letters today. These letters are not only deeply spiritual, but they’re often poetic and literary as well. I’d love to include some of the more lyrical entries, but this is too long already.

Some years ago a philosophy started going around Christendom that God did not have a specific will for people regarding life work, location, spouse, etc.; He left it up to individuals to do what they wanted. That never set well with me, for too many reasons to go into here. But I saw anew one reason through these letters and journals: the sanctifying affect that waiting for and trying to discern the will of God could have. Near the end of the book, Valerie records her father’s words: “I have sought slowly the will of God, and the slowness has brought strength into the conviction of it, and joy in the realization of it” (p. 233).

Jim wrote, “The Lord has a certain slow dignity about His movings which constantly shames my fretting unbelief” (p. 163).

It touched my heart that they chose for their wedding verse Isaiah 25:9: “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him.”

Valerie shares that “If I could express my one hope for compiling this book, my prayer is that these entries of theirs would call us to search faithfully for God in His Word. And upon discovering His unchanging, faithful, merciful, and loving character, I pray we would be more fully moved in obedience to Him that we too might leave a lasting legacy of faith as my parents did” (p. 45).

The Elliots’ writing does encourage me in my walk with God and continues to spur me on to seek Him in His Word and find and do His will.

(By the way, last year, Revive Our Hearts did a series of interviews with Valerie about her parents’ story and writing the book here. I enjoyed listening to them then, and they have the transcripts up now.)

(Sharing with Grace and Truth, Hearth and Soul, Senior Salon,
InstaEncouragements,Carol’s Books You Loved, Booknificent)

Book Review: Becoming Elisabeth Elliot

Posted on January 26, 2021 by Barbara Harper

Elisabeth Elliot has been one of my heroes for decades. I first discovered her in college when I read Through Gates of Splendor, her book about the ministries and deaths of her husband and four friends. Then I read nearly everything she had written, received her newsletter and a Back to the Bible devotional mailing of her writings for years, and got to hear her speak in person twice.

The Elliots and their friends had wanted to reach out to a seemingly unreachable tribe in Ecuador. Though the beginning seemed promising, all five men were speared to death by the tribe, known then as Aucas (later by their own name for themselves, Waodani). A few years later, Elisabeth and her young daughter, Valerie, and Rachel Saint, sister to one of the other men, went to live among the Waodani. Some became believers, with a testimony that still stands to this day.

Elisabeth eventually came back to America. She authored 30 books and spoke to women, eventually hosting a radio program, Gateway to Joy, and sending out a monthly newsletter.

She surprised herself by remarrying a college theology professor, Addison Leitch. He succumbed to cancer four years later. She was an adjunct professor for a while. A few years later, she married Lars Gren. She had dementia the last several years of her life, lost the ability to speak, and died at age 88 on June 15, 2015.

Those are the spare details of her life. But they don’t capture her personality, her character. Why did so many women love to read her words and hear her speak and write her letters asking her advice about their problems?

Ellen Vaughn has attempted to answer those questions in her authorized biography, Becoming Elisabeth Elliot. I admit I had mixed emotions when I first heard of this project. Vaughn was well aware that she was going to be up against a number of expectations. She had access to Elisabeth’s multiple journals as well as many friends and relatives.

Of course, Elisabeth didn’t start out as the Elisabeth Elliot of such wisdom and depth. She began life as Betty Howard. Her early journals reflect a normal girlhood and a fair amount of teenage angst over boys and disagreements with her mother. Yet even as young as eleven, she showed a depth of thought and desire to follow and obey God. Betty Stam, who was killed by the Chinese along with her husband, John, had been a guest in the Howard home and made a great impression on young Betty. As a child, Betty Howard wrote and took Betty Stam’s prayer for her own.

Vaughn goes on to follow Betty’s education, meeting of Jim Elliot, and the long wrestling over whether they should marry. Jim had thought God wanted him to be a single missionary. When he became attracted to Betty, he wasn’t sure whether that was a result of God’s leading or his own desires. It took a few years to figure out. Finally he and Elisabeth married and worked among the Quichua Indians in Ecudaor. Then there are the details leading up to the Waodani outreach, the men’s deaths, Elisabeth’s wrenching grief, working with Rachel Saint, and return to the US.

The biography stops there, with a second volume in the works. I hadn’t realized that this was only part one until I started reading it. I wish that had been made more plain, but it wouldn’t have affected my desire to own and read the book.

Elisabeth was a critical thinker and wrestled with the ways of God, pat, churchy answers, what worldliness and being a missionary even meant, and so much more. She was strongly introverted and could come across as distant and aloof (when she first met Jim’s parents, he told her she had “made a universally horrible impression.”) She could seem unemotional, but she poured out her emotions in her journals.

One thing that Elisabeth discovered in her walk of faith was that God’s ways are inscrutable. She was a gifted linguist, and her first mission was an effort to reduce the Colorado language to writing. But the one man who knew both Spanish and Colorado well and who was willing to help her was senselessly murdered. Her careful work and notes were stolen. Her husband died. Her time of living with the Waodani bore some fruit but was fraught with frustrations. She felt all her work to that point was in ashes.

But she knew God was good and trustworthy, and the best thing, the only thing she could do was obey him, even when she didn’t understand. Her experiences and wrestling over issues of faith and practice made her who she was and gave her a depth and realism that struck chords with other women.

I felt overall that the biography did a good job. Ellen didn’t put Elisabeth on a pedestal, nor did she present her as unworthy of esteem. My one criticism is that, perhaps in an effort to show that Elisabeth was an ordinary woman and not a super-saint, some excerpts from her journals were shared that I can’t imagine Elisabeth would have wanted public. I understand why some people destroy their journals and letters before they die. I’m thankful Elisabeth didn’t, and I appreciate the insight they gave into her thinking. Still, some of it was probably not meant for public consumption.

Also, an index would have been helpful.

I’m looking forward to the next volume. I knew much about Elisabeth’s early life from her writings, but I’m not as familiar with the second half. I did learn several new things, however. For instance, I didn’t know (or forgot, if I had known) that Elisabeth was told about and wanted to go to the Waodani long before she and Jim married, and that part of the groups urgency to reach them was “rumors that the Ecuadorian government and the oil companies might well solve the ‘Waodani problem’ by using the military” (p. 139). Also, Through Gates of Splendor was written in a six-week period while she was in a hotel and her folks took care of her daughter. The publishers urgently wanted the story to be available. In her previous writings, I had sensed some tension between her and Rachel. The problems there are detailed here, and understandable. They were two very different personalities with completely different methods and training. I appreciate Elisabeth’s discretion in not dragging all of it out into the public eye.

I appreciate this summation of the Elliots near the end of the book:

Whether you agree or disagree with their choices, whether you resonate or not with their particular personalities, the takeaway from their lives is a reckless abandon for God. A willingness to cast off any illusions of self-protection, in order to burn for Christ. An absolutely liberating, astonishing radical freedom that comes only when you have, in fact, spiritually died to your own wants, ambitions, will, desires, reputation, and everything else (p. 274).

A couple of my friends reviewed this book as well:

Michele: A Life of Reckless Abandon for God
Ann: Becoming Elisabeth Elliot

(Sharing with Tell His Story, InstaEncouragements, Carole’s Books You Loved, Booknificent)

(I’m counting this book for the Biography category of the Nonfiction Reading Challenge.)