The price of love…

 

Do you remember my posting ‘GOD is love’ where I wrote that though I can receive – and I actually gladly receive – the love of Christ, I could simply not conceive/fathom the love that the LORD has shown for me/us on the Cross? Well, the same love, which has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5), can sometimes lead us to do things which are –humanly- unconceivable. Elisabeth Elliot is the perfect illustration of the type of actions and sacrifices that this love which has been poured into our hearts is capable of unleashing when it is not restrained.

Elisabeth was born in Belgium in 1926 from missionary parents. In 1952, she also went to Ecuador to work as a missionary. It was there that she met Jim Elliot and they married in 1953 in the city of Quito, Ecuador. Jim had always hoped to have the opportunity to enter the territory of an unreached tribe. The Aucas (now called Huaorani) were in that category -- a fierce group whom no one had succeeded in meeting without being killed. After the discovery of their whereabouts, Jim and four other missionaries entered Auca territory. On January 8, 1956, after a friendly contact with three of the tribe, they were speared to death and their bodies were dumped in a river. Jim died leaving a young widow behind and a 10 months old baby daughter.

Any other woman would have left that ‘cursed/wicked’ country and gone back home, telling the LORD: “After all, I’ve tried.” But not Elisabeth. She remained in Ecuador and continued to work with another Indian tribe. Then, in October 1958, after learning their language through two Huaorani women living amongst the Indian tribe she was working with, Elisabeth took her three year old daughter and went to live with the Huaorani, the very people who had killed her husband. She spent two years with them! To those who could not understand her ‘mad’ decision, she said:

“The love of Christ constrains us. There is no other motivation for missionary service that is going to survive the blows of even the first year. You do it for Him.”

This is how far love for Jesus will carry you. With hindsight, we can always say that she had to do it so that her husband would not have died in vain. Or that it was not good for evil to triumph and people to be too scared to go into that tribe again. Or even that love and grace much more abounded where sin and evil abounded; but all this would be a bit too cheap and easy to say afterwards, wouldn’t it?

From 1988 to 2001, she could be heard on a daily radio program, Gateway to Joy, produced by the Good News Broadcasting Association of Lincoln, Nebraska. She almost always opened the program with the phrase, "'You are loved with an everlasting love,' – that's what the Bible says – 'and underneath are the everlasting arms.' This is your friend, Elisabeth Elliot ..."

Sometimes, we wrongly think that it is only 15th or 18th century missionaries who were capable of such abnegation. Elisabeth Elliot was born in 1926 and is still very much alive. As I write, here are the latest postings one her Facebook page:

• “God will not protect you from anything that will make you more like Jesus.” (Oct. 22, 2013)
• “The way we live ought to manifest the truth of what we believe. A messy life speaks of a messy and incoherent faith.” (Sept. 25, 2013)

Have a brilliant Christ-love-filled week!