Open Hands - Relinquishment - Part 4

Relinquishment is always a part of the process of maturing.   When Christian parents have done all that can be done to shape their children for God, the time comes when the hands must let go.  The child, now a responsible adult, must be released.  For any parent this is painful, even when the child is moving in the direction the parents prayed for.  The child's continued development, and the spiritual health of the parents as well, depend on the willingness to accept this next stage of the cycle -- hands off, ready to part without a struggle, giving up authority and control, entrusting that child to God.

When, on the other hand, the child has obviously rejected what the parents have taught, the severing is painful in the extreme.  All has been done that could be done and all has been done in vain.  Nevertheless the time comes to let go, as it came for the father of the prodigal when he turned his wayward son over to God.  He must have foreseen the direction he would take, but he prayed for him and waited every day for his return.  God cared for that young man as the father could never have done, brought him to bankruptcy (another severe mercy), and returned him to his father, repentant and willing even to be a mere servant. 

It is merciful Father who strips us when we need to be stripped, as the tree needs to be stripped of its blossoms.  He is not finished with us yet, whatever the loss we suffer, for as we loose our hold on visible things, the invisible become more precious --where our treasure is, there will our hearts be.

He may be asking us to sell a much-loved house, to part with material things we no longer need (someone else may need them), to retire from a position in which we feel ourselves irreplaceable, to turn over to Him fears which hold us in bondage, forms of self-improvement or recreation or social life which hinder obedience. 

"Does all this seem hard?" asks Lilias Trotter, "Does any soul, young in physical or in spiritual life, shrink back and say, 'I would rather remain in the springtime -- I do not want to reach utnot he things that are before if it means all this matter of pain and dying.'

"To such comes the Master's voice, 'Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer' (Rv 2:10,).  You are right to be glad in His April days while He gives them.  Every stage of the heavenly growth in us is lovely to Him; He is the God of the daisies and the lambs and the merry child hearts!"

Lilias Trotter's Parables

Two little books, now out of print, wonderfully expand on the imagery Jesus used.  Parables of the Cross and Parables of the Christ-Life.

The Sign of the Cross
     Can we not trace the sign of the Cross in the first hint of the new spring's dawning?  In many cases, as in the chestnut, before a single leaf has faded, next year's buds may be seen at the summit of branch and twig, formed into its very stem blood-red.

     Back in the plant's first stages, the crimson touch is to be found in seed-leaves and fresh shoots, and even in hidden sprouts.  Look at the acorn, for instance, as it breaks its shell, and see how the baby tree bears its birthmark. 

A Clean Severance
     Botanists say that across the leaf-stalk there forms in autumn a layer of thin-walled cells, termed "the layer of separation."  These press and tear the older cells apart, and become disintegrated in their turn, till without an effort the leaf detaches with a severance clean and sharp as though made by a knife.  The plant sentences the leaf to death, and the winds of God carry out the sentence.


The New Leaf
     From the first hour that the layer of separation begins to form in the leafstalk, the leaf's fate is sealed; there is never a moment's reversal of the decision.  Each day that follows is a steady carrying out of the plant's purpose:  "This old leaf shall die, and the new leaf shall live."


Spiritual Pruning
     It is when the death of winter has done its work that the sun can draw out in each plant its own individuality, and make its existence full and fragrant.  Spiritual growth means something more than the sweeping away of the old leaves of sin -- it means the life of the Lord Jesus developed in us.


Life Out of Death
Note this bit of gorse bush.  The whole year round the thorn has been hardening and sharpening.

Lilias Trotter

Lilias Trotter was born in London in 1853, seventh child of a businessman.  She was tall and slender with large brown eyes, an active and orderly mind, and "a quality of selflessness which gave her a peculiar charm."  When she was twenty-three she met John Ruskin in Venice, who recognized her gift for painting and offered to give her lessons.  "She seemed to learn everything the instant she was shown it, "he wrote," and ever so much more than she was taught."  But her heart was elsewhere.  She had put herself, her gifts, her life at God's disposal, so it was a great disappointment to Ruskin and a surprise to others when she decided to give herself to missionary work.  She was criticized and even ostracized, but her enthusiasm was fed, not quenched, by scorn.

For some reason, North Africa awakened strange vibrations in her soul.  She heard what she believed was God's specific call, and in 1888 landed in Algiers, where she spent the rest of her life.  She was the founder of the Algiers Mission Band which later merged with the North Africa Mission.  She died in 1928.

She found in the plant life of the deserts the fundamental principle of existence-- that death is the gateway to life-- exhibited in a thousand ways, and painted them with her brush and watercolors.  Who is to say she was a fool for turning her back on home, the possibilities of marriage and perhaps an artists career (these, after all, were certainly God's good gifts)?  The last of her water colors in Parables of the Cross is that of the wood sorrel, springing from an apparently useless little pile of twigs and dead leaves.   She writes, "God may use ... the things that He has wrought in us, for the blessings of souls unknown to us:  as these twigs and leaves of bygone years whose individuality is forgotten, pass on vitality still to the newborn wood sorrel.  God only knows the endless possibilities that lie folded in each one of us!

A Path Through Suffering by Elisabeth Elliot