Good Thinking

I have been reading "A Chance To Die" by Elisabeth Elliot. It is the biography of Amy Carmichael, missionary to India. Amy was a prolific writer, and a sober-minded soldier for Christ. She truly redeemed the time and sought to use her energies in the most spiritually profitable ways possible. Here are some quotes I've read this week that have encouraged my soul.

After many difficult things happened, one of Amy's mentors in her work, a close spiritual friend, died. Elliot writes,

"Kind people, wanting to console, made the usual observation: 'It is very hard to see how this can be for the best.'
'We are not asked to SEE,' said Amy. 'Why need we when we KNOW?' We know - not the answer to the inevitable Why, but the incontestable fact that it is for the best. 'It is an irreparable loss, but is it faith at all if it is 'hard to trust' when things are entirely bewildering?' "

In this same period of life, Amy writes in a prayer poem:

"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.

And another:
"And shall I pray Thee change Thy will, my Father,
Until it be according unto mine?
But, no, Lord, no, that shall never be, rather
I pray Thee blend my human will with Thine."

And this poem hits me, living in modern America, quite hard (especially the last 2 lines). Reminding me to think correctly about what the life if a servant of Christ should look like:

"Hast thou no scar?
No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?
I hear thee sung as mighty in the land,
I hear them hail thy bright, ascendant star,
Hast thou no scar?

Hast thou no wound?
Yet I was wounded by the archers, spent,
Leaned Me against a tree to die; and rent
By ravening beasts that compassed Me, I swooned:
Has thou no wound?

No wound? No scar?
Yet as the Master shall the servant be,
And pierce-ed are the feet that follow Me;
But thine are whole: can he have followed far
Who has no wound nor scar?"