• Jan. 9, 2008
Stepping Heavenward

I am currently re-reading Elizabeth Prentiss' book "Stepping Heavenward".  If I could entreat all Christian women (wether single or married, young or old) to read one book outside their bible it would be this one. 

Sometimes we tend to get so caught up in the day to day that we think the day to day is just a struggle to be overcome.   But the day to day is the journey.  If we live as though the day to day is simply to be overcome we miss so many valuable things along the way.  I am trying to learn that.  Trying to see that everything that comes to me each day wether good or bad is a gift from God to make me in the person he wants me to be.  If the gift is something pleasant, praise the Lord, he is great in his mercies.  If the gift is something hard, trust the Lord, he knows exactly what I need and he is developing in me something that I lack.

I would like to share something from the book that ties in with this thought.  The book is a series of journal entries.  In this portion of the book the main character has just been through a time of intense grief after losing her 5 year old son Ernest.  She has just met with a friend that she has not seen in some time.  Here is a quote from the book,

"I met today and old friend...She asked so many questions about my little Ernest that I had to tell her the whole story of his precious life, sickness and death.  I forced myself to do this without any great demand on her sympathies.  My reward for the constraint I thus put upon myself was the abrupt question: 'Haven't you grown stoical?'  I felt the angry blood rush thorugh my veins as it has not done in a long time.  My pride was wounded to the quick, and those cruel, unjust words still rankle in my heart.  This is not as it should be.  I am constantly praying that my pride may be humbled; and then when it is attacked, I shrink from the pain the blow causes and am angry with the hand that inflicts it.  It is just so with two or three unkind things (my friend) has said to me.  I can't help brooding over them and feeling stung with their injustice even while making the most desperate struggle to rise above and forget them.  It is well for our fellow creatures that God forgives them when we fail to do it, and I can easily fancy that (my friend) is at this moment dearer in His sight than I am who have taken fire at a chance word.  And I can see now, what I wonder I did not see at the time, that God was dealing very kindly and wisely with me when He made (my friend) overlook my good qualities...and call out all my bad ones, since the ax was thus laid at the root of self-love.  And it is plain that self-love cannot die without a fearful struggle."

I can't remember the last time that I looked upon someone's unkind remark to me as a gift from God to put an end to my pride and make me more like Christ.  But I am sure that it is so.  May God help me to view all of life through this lens.

Shannon

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