There are times when nothing soothes or encourages me quite like the writings of women who’ve journeyed with the Lord a long while and have traveled paths paved by those who’ve forsaken all and have followed Christ to “the ends of the earth” literally or when they’ve come to the end of themselves and pressed on in faith.
This devotional was a great blessing to me as I consider the living sacrifice or both women’s lives — Elisabeth Elliot’s and Amy Carmichael’s. So, it is with great respect and gratitude to the Lord that I share this piece with you.
Moonless Trust – by Elisabeth Elliot
Some of you are perhaps feeling that you are voyaging just now on a moonless sea. Uncertainty surrounds you. There seem to be no signs to follow. Perhaps you feel about to be engulfed by loneliness. There is no one to whom you can speak of your need.
Amy Carmichael wrote of such a feeling when, as a missionary of twenty-six, she had to leave Japan because of poor health, then travel to China for recuperation, but then realized God was telling her to go to Ceylon. (All this preceded her going to India, where she stayed for fifty-three years.) I have on my desk her original handwritten letter of August 25, 1894, as she was en route to Colombo. “All along, let us remember, we are not asked to understand, but simply to obey…. On July 28, Saturday, I sailed. We had to come on board on Friday night, and just as the tender (a small boat) where were the dear friends who had come to say goodbye was moving off, and the chill of loneliness shivered through me, like a warm love-clasp came the long-loved lines–‘And only Heaven is better than to walk with Christ at midnight, over moonless seas.’ I couldn’t feel frightened then. Praise Him for the moonless seas–all the better the opportunity for proving Him to be indeed the El Shaddai, ‘the God who is Enough.”‘
Let me add my own word of witness to hers and to that of the tens of thousands who have learned that He is indeed Enough. He is not all we would ask for (if we were honest), but it is precisely when we do not have what we would ask for, and only then, that we can clearly perceive His all-sufficiency. It is when the sea is moonless that the Lord has become my Light.”
May you always be blessed.
