Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Endurance training

I've always been one to be more spontaneous and impulsive to a certain extent. Improvising has often been a welcomed challenge. However, I'm at a point in my life that I don't have the energy to improvise, but my organizational skills are still not where they need to be to make up for it.
A lot of good things are going on, but there is just so much to be done and it's been more challenging than I had anticipated. I feel I'm running a marathon without the athletic advantage.
So in a way, I feel very out of sorts, and out of balance.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Limitations Are Gifts

For several years now, I have subscribed to daily devotionals that contain excerpts of writings from Elisabeth Elliot. Because I've been on it for a few years, some are more familiar than others. And today's is one of the ones that has greatly encouraged me over the years and came back just in time to refresh and remind my soul. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.
- Renata


Limitations Are Gifts

Yesterday as I was reading my brother Tom's book, The Achievement of C.S. Lewis, I was admiring again the scope of his knowledge, his ability to comprehend another's genius, and his wonderful command of English. By contrast my own limitations seemed severe indeed. They are of many kinds--analytical, critical, articulatory, not to mention educational. But my limitations, placing me in a different category from Tom Howard's or anyone else's, become, in the sovereignty of God, gifts. For it is with the equipment that I have been given that I am to glorify God. It is this job, not that one, that He gave me.

For some, the limitations are not intellectual but physical. The same truth applies. Within the context of their suffering, with whatever strength they have, be it ever so small, they are to glorify God. The apostle Paul actually claimed that he "gloried" in infirmities, because it was there that the power of Christ was made known to him.

If we regard each limitation which we are conscious of today as a gift--that is, as one of the terms of our particular service to the Master--we won't complain or pity or excuse ourselves. We will rather offer up those gifts as a sacrifice, with thanksgiving.

Excerpt from A Lamp For My Feet by Elisabeth Elliot