Elizabeth Elliot's Insights into Suffering, #3

 

“Cast your burden on the Lord and He will sustain you.” (Psalm 55:22)

 What do you do after God gives you something? You give it back.

This is true even for our sufferings. (Insight #3).

 In her book Suffering is Never for Nothing, Elizabeth Elliot makes two observations based on the verse Psalm 55:22, quoted above. She wrote, “To my amazement and delight I discovered that burden in the Hebrew is the same word as the word for gift. This is a transforming truth. If I thank God for this very thing which is killing me, I can begin dimly and faintly to see it as a gift. I can realize that it is through this very thing which is so far from being what I would have chosen, that God wants to teach me His way of salvation.”

 Upon reading that the word burden also means gift, my wife Jean started to cry. It was not hard for her to think of her cancer as a burden, but to simultaneously think of it as a gift—that was not an easy idea. Cancer was not a gift she would have chosen, but it was God’s choice, not hers. Who can understand such an awful thing as a gift? Elliot wrote, “Suffering is a mystery. It is not explained, but it is affirmed.”

I wanted to understand this burden-gift connection, so I looked up the word in my Old Testament dictionary. It agreed with Elliot: “As providential gifts from the hand of God, our cares should be given back to him for his gracious disposition.” (Youngblood, DOTTE 2:415). A burden is a gift, not just to receive but to be returned! This is how we accept the gift.

Elliot gave several examples of this burden-gift connection. In Genesis we read the story of Joseph whose brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt. Once there his life became worse, and he wound up imprisoned on false charges. He probably didn’t see his circumstances as a gift—at least not at first. But many years later he told his brothers that it was not they who had sent him to Egypt, it was God! Joseph’s perspective had changed, as he saw the hand of God in every stage of his life.

Consider the Apostle Paul’s thorn in the flesh, a physical affliction which he prayed for God to remove but God said No. Elliot gave a humorous application of Paul’s thorn: on rare occasions her loving husband spoke a hurtful word to her. She realized in those times that she was married to a sinner—and she reminded herself that he too was married to a sinner. I laughed at her suggestion that our spouse might sometimes be our thorn in the flesh—to me, that was a new interpretation! But the application is the same: take the trouble and give it back to God.

Elliot also applied this truth to her life. She had been given circumstances which she would never have chosen: the death of two husbands, widowhood, and loneliness. Her burdens were a gift from God. As she gave them to the Lord, he sustained her through them and actually used her widowhood to bring him glory.

How do we give our burdens back to God? Elliot lists three ways: offerings, sacrifices, and obedience. Every burden/gift which God gives can be offered back to him—the verse in Psalms says to cast it back upon him and let him deal with it. This reciprocal pattern was the basis of the Hebrew system of sacrifices. God blessed Israel with prosperity—and in thanksgiving they gave it back as offerings and sacrifices. Like a parent who provides money for her child to buy her a Christmas gift, God provides us the resources for us to sacrifice to him. This includes our sufferings which we cast back upon him.

But can something so awful be a fitting offering to give to God? Elliot asked, “How does a mother feel when her little two-year-old comes into the house with a mashed dandelion clenched in his little, sweaty fist and he offers it to her? It means everything in the world because love transforms it. That’s what this is all about. Suffering and love are inextricably bound up together. And love invariably means sacrifice.” Love, suffering, and sacrifice go together.

But as profound as this insight is, our next post will go deeper into the goal of giving our sufferings back to God: Transfiguration.

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