When I consider this month’s focus on Submission, I’m reminded of my One Word for 2023, Surrender.
When I determined my One Word for this year, I picked up a copy of Elisabeth Elliot’s 1982 book entitled, Joyful Surrender: 7 Disciplines for the Believer’s Life. Elliot recalls how her father was an amateur ornithologist who, as a young man, had taken an interest in birds long before bird-watching became a popular pastime. He gave lectures, illustrated with colored slides, in which he talked about the habits of the birds and beautifully imitated their songs.
He nearly always closed his lecture with these lines: Said the Robin to the Sparrow, “I should really like to know Why these anxious human beings Rush about and worry so.”
Said the Sparrow to the Robin, “Friend, I think that it must be That they have no heavenly Father Such as cares for you and me.”
Have we no such loving Father? We have, of course.
If you don’t recall Elisabeth Elliot’s story, her first husband, Jim Elliot, was killed in 1956 while attempting to make missionary contact with the Auca people of eastern Ecuador. She later spent two years as a missionary to the tribe members who killed her husband.
Consider what “Joyful Surrender” means to her.
Click here to consider the 7 Disciplines for the Believer’s Life that lead to Joyful Surrender