Elisabeth Elliot: Five lessons on things

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He who did not spare his own Son, but gave Him up for us all — how will he not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things? Romans 8:32

“It usually takes loss or deprivation in some measure for most of us to count the blessings we so readily take for granted. The loss of material things is not to be compared with the loss of people we love, but most of us have experienced both, and it is things we are considering now…

The first lesson is that things are given by God. Make no mistake, my friends. All good giving, every perfect gift, comes from above from the Father of the lights of heaven [James 1:17]…

The second lesson is that things are given us to be received with thanksgiving. God gives. We receive…Because God gives us things indirectly, by enabling us to make them with our own hands (out of things He has made, of course), or to earn the money to buy them, or to receive them through someone else’s giving, we are prone to forget that He gave them to us…

The third lesson is that things can be material for sacrifice. This is what is called the eucharistic life. The Father pours out His blessings on us; we, His creatures, receive them with open hands, give thanks, and lift them up as an offering back to Him, thus completing the circle…

This lesson leads naturally to the fourth, which is that things are given to us to enjoy for a while…The Bible says, “God…endows us richly with all things to enjoy” [1 Tim. 6:17]. It also says, “Do not set your hearts on the godless world or anything in it” [Col. 3:2]. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should enjoy things made for us to enjoy. What is not at all fitting is that we should set our hearts on them. Temporal things must be treated as temporal things — received, given thanks for, offered back, but enjoyed. They must not be treated like eternal things…

And there is a fifth: all that belongs to Christ is ours, therefore, as Amy Carmichael wrote, “All that was ever ours is ours forever.” We often say that what is ours belongs to Christ. Do we remember the opposite: that what is His is ours? That seems to me a wonderful truth, almost an incredible truth. If it is so, how can we really “lose” anything?”

Elisabeth Elliot in Discipline: The Glad Surrender (Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 1982) 105-117.

These five ideas serve as a basic theology for the “eucharistic life” for each of us. The term “eucharistic” celebrates that we acknowledge that all we have received  — gifts of grace upon gifts of grace — cause us to be filled with gratitude so that we gratefully receive, enjoy, and return everything back to God. When we live this way our lives reflect God’s generosity. We choose this way of living this because we have come to realize that generosity is God’s design for temporal things. When we hold on to them, we lose, but when we let go of them, and thus rightly relate to them, we gain.

God help us by your Holy Spirit in this Lenten season and beyond to exhibit these five lessons on things so that others may see our example and make the choice to join us in living eucharistic lives for You. Hear our prayer in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself up for us all, to purchase us with His blood on the cross. Amen.