The Truth is Stubborn

I read a great article by Elisabeth Elliot speaking about abortion. She asks the following question:

“Is [the fetus] an object with no life of its own, a bit of tissue which belongs to a woman who has the right to do with it what she chooses?”

It struck me (or maybe God struck me) with the idea that maybe I feel that way about my children. No, I would never dream of murdering them in my womb, but how often have I done with them as I chose? The other night after a battling day where all four of us struggled, I chose to act in anger, speaking harshly to my dear girls.

Elliot quotes: "No truth," wrote Hannah Arendt, "that crosses someone's profit, ambition, or lust, is permissible. Unwelcome facts possess an infuriating stubbornness that nothing can move except plain lies."

She goes on to say, “These are the unwelcome facts, but they are infuriatingly stubborn.”

The fact is my children are precious, God given blessings that I have no right to treat poorly in anger. The fact is I chose to be angry. I can make all the excuses in the world, but the facts stubbornly remain.

“Be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to wrath.”

God has encouraged me in the past few days to take a long, hard look at several behaviors … well, let’s just state the facts … sins in my life that I have excused. God, in His grace and mercy, in His quest to make us holy for His glory, is “infuriatingly stubborn,” and I am so glad. I am so glad He is taking the time and effort to mold me and make me into what He created me to be.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving today (a little late since we’re not in America), I want to thank our Lord and Savior for His refining work in all of us. May the work show through in our everyday plodding, and may we never resent it.

~Casey