Little deaths

I desperately want to avoid frivolous chatter in this blog. Every post must contribute something worthwhile-- a thought, a realization, an exhortation. But perhaps that is an excuse to let myself off the hook and write nothing at all, if I hold myself to such a high standard. Posts don't have to be monumentally long in order to be useful. A paragraph may potentially be as valuable as a treatise. I need to get over my own ego and just write. Not only do I want to be able to look back with a clear conscience, that I am not ashamed of what I have written, but I also want to be more consistent in the endeavor of writing itself (having something written to look back upon), practicing discipline in one small way that it might be readily available for other areas.

Enough intro. Here's an excerpt I found to be encouraging, from Elisabeth Elliot's A Pathway Through Suffering:

So my decision to receive Him, although made only once, I must affirm in thousands of ways, through thousands of choices, for the rest of my life--my will or His, my life (the old one) or His (the new one). It is no to myself and yes to Him. This continual affirmation is usually made in small things, inconveniences, unselfish giving up of preferences, yielding gracefully to the wishes of others without playing the martyr, learning to close doors quietly and turn the volume down on the music we'd love to play loudly-- sufferings they may be, but only small-sized ones. We may think of them as little "deaths."

...The further we travel on this pathway to glory the more glorious it becomes, because we are given to understand that every glad surrender of self, which to the young Christian may seem such a morbid and odious thing, is merely a little death, like the tree's "loss" of the dead leaf, in order that a fresh new one may, in God's time, take its place.

My heart finds it far too easy to masquerade as a martyr. I complain far too often, and fail to grasp the delightful truth that God is in the suffering I face. I have experienced such minuscule suffering, when I consider what is possible. God has seen fit to spare me, for this time, but I do not know what lies ahead. I have seen, though, that He grows His children substantially through the dark times, and am beginning to accept and even rejoice in those little sufferings while in the midst of them. It is possible not only to look back and see God's hand at work in past trials, but to know that He is working in the present for my good and His glory, and rest in that truth.

I'm reading Hinds' Feet on High Places, too, and finding it superb. Good books are such a gift from above!