Right after I meet Jesus in heaven, I will head right on over to Elisabeth Elliot. (Ok, I don't think she is dead this morning, but I am assuming that she will head to glory before I get there.) She has been widowed twice, lived as a missionary for several years, and therefore experienced the suffering of loneliness for a good portion of her life. Her writings largely deal with suffering with hope. She is plainly honest without the fluff of some women writers, and even though I have never met her, I love her. Wait, have I said that before?
The combination of motherhood and military life make for a lonely life. And, so these words this morning from Elliot's book, The Path of Loneliness, ministered to my heart.
"Pain, as C.S. Lewis said, is God's megaphone ("He whispers to us in our joys, speaks to us in our conscience, and shouts to us in our pain.") The pain of loneliness is one way in which He wants to get our attention. We may be earnestly desiring to be obedient and holy. But we may be missing the fact that it is here, where we happen to be at this moment and not in another place or another time, that we may learn to love Him-here where it seems He is not at work, where His will seems obscure or frightening, where He is not doing what we expected Him to do, where He is most absent. Here and nowhere else is the appointed place. If faith does not go to work here, it will not got to work at all."
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