I've been reading Fragments that Remain, compiled by Bee Trehane from the notes and letters of Amy Carmichael. She worked in India to spread the gospel, and rescued hundreds of children from temple prostitution from 1895 to 1951. I remember hearing her story as a child and how she would stain her skin with coffee to pass as Indian.
I am always inspired and challenged to read of missionaries such as Amy Carmichael or Jim & Elizabeth Elliott, and realize again that nothing is new under the sun....to see how they spoke to the same challenges we face daily, and the Truth they depended on is exactly the same Truth we hold today. There is something very reassuring in that realization.
Resignation
There are some brave souls, and God know them well,
Though magazines may not their praises swell,
Whose life breathes a frangrance, just felt, not seen,
Like the scent of the violet lost in green,
Trusted with pain in the shaded room,
Trusted with office, or shop, or loom,
Such, day by day, toil, suffer and pray,
Contented to serve their God any way.
But some there are, super-finely molded,
Who sit with hands submissively folded;
Who vegetate rather than live, and suggest
Good cabbages - doing no harm at best,
Of the poor dark world's dark need they know;
They take a great interest in missions, and oh!
At times they are almost ready to go-
But then, by some flaw in their calculation,
They mistake laziness for resignation.
For they are so speedily persuaded
That all the reasons by which they are aided
To gravitate back to the easy chair
Are fully as solid as they are fair.
They "can't be spared", they have surely heard,
And they don't recollect the rather obsurd
Little fad that, most certainly, never a word
Would be raised did the question involved a Ring,
For "Of course, that is quite a different thing."
They have "so few gifts", and "they cannot speak";
'Tis their "Cross in life" to be timid and weak-
Alas that we call by such sacred name,
Excuses, invented to save us from pain,
Far, far removed from the Cross and shame!
Perhaps the Society's door was locked
When with somewhat uncertain knuckle they knocked,
And everyone said "Ah! now it's plain
You cannot be meant to try again.
How terrible should you the business shirk
Of life's most serious fancy-work
For our Father's business is temple's murk!"
They sigh, and suppose so. The argumentation
Transforms laziness into resignation.
If such a deluded one reads this rhyme
Oh will she not waken while there is time?
Don't think that "Sit still" will infallibly be
A life motto written expressly for thee.
It may be the word is "Go forward" --if not,
If before the Master you stand in your lot,
He will flame your soul with a burning hot
And passionate fire, and you shall know
The joy of setting some other aglow.
And now, won't you face it, and have a cremation
Of the laziness which you called "resignation"?
It's so much easier to vegetate, but what a high cost we would pay at The End, if we miss the true call God has on our lives. All summer this was our struggle - were we willing to leave the comfort of our present and step out of our comfort zone . It's not the first time in our life we have faced that type of fork in the road, but certainly one of the more important. What is the Lord calling you to? Could it me one of these little ones?
