I was blessed this morning by Elisabeth Elliot. Keep a Quiet Heart has been a good book to go through along w/ some other morning reading. She often talks about the role of suffering in our walk.....and today, she likened it to what it really feels like to be a vine....the pruning that the vine goes through, how it gets transplanted to harder grounds to grow in, how it gets stripped from all its fruit so that others can enjoy it and stamp the fruit to make juice, while the vine is left behind, all alone and forsaken.
I especially needed to be reminded of the following: "Why is it that we do not seem to listen for God's voice except when we are in trouble? God speaks to us sometimes, Bassi says, through soft summer air, but we do not feel it to be God - only the wind. He speaks to us "when friends meet happily and all is merry" but we see only our friends. When a bird's song moves us to sudden rapture, do we hear God's voice or only the bird's?" (p. 66).
Ben and I have learned so much through many ups and downs lately (and the ups and downs don't come close to what I see others going through), but when the dust settles and life seems more normal, do we still hear God so strongly? It's a good reminder for me to abide in God...through times of struggles and times of ease.
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