“What a revolution would come over the world–the world of starving bodies at home and starving souls abroad, if something like this were the standard of giving; if God’s people ventured on “making themselves poor” as Jesus did, for the sake of the need around; if the “I”–“me”–“mine” were practically delivered up, no longer to be recognized when they clash with those needs.
The hour of this new dying is clearly defined to the dandelion globe: it is marked by detachment. There is no sense of wrenching: it stands ready, holding up its little life, not knowing when or where or how the wind that bloweth where it listeth may carry it away. It holds itself no longer for its own keeping, only as something to be given: a breath does the rest, turning the “readiness to will” into “performance.” (2 Cor. 8. 11.) And to a soul that through “deaths oft” has been brought to this point, even acts that look as if they must involve an effort, become something natural, spontaneous, full of a “heavenly involuntariness,” so simply as they are the outcome of the indwelling love of Christ.
Shall we not ask God to convict us, as to where lies the hindrance to this self-emptying? It is not alone mere selfishness, in the ordinary sense, that prevents it; long after this has been cleansed away by the Precious Blood there may remain, unrecognized, the self-life in more subtle forms. It may co-exist with much that looks like sacrifice; there may be much of usefulness and of outward self-denial, and yet below the surface may remain a clinging to our own judgment, a confidence in our own resources, an unconscious taking of our own way, even in God’s service.” –Lilias Trotter (1853-1928), Parables of the Cross
Andrew Micah 