Suffering Is Never for Nothing, by Elisabeth Elliot

Jennifer Lyell has done readers a great service.  She has taken a collection of CDs, recordings of Elisabeth Elliot speaking at conference, edited the talks, and published the content as a book.  As anyone who knows of Elliot or has read her prior work knows, anything she writes is worth reading.  This is no less true of this posthumous book, Suffering Is Never for Nothing.

Elliot is no stranger to suffering.  She lost her first husband, Jim Elliot, when he was murdered along with several other missionaries by members of a tribe they were trying to evangelize.  She lost her second husband to cancer.  But throughout her life, her writing and public ministry demonstrated a faithfulness and joy that could rejoice in suffering. 

She defines suffering like this: "Suffering is having what you don't want or wanting what you don't have."  It sounds almost too simple.  But either way, she writes that "there are a good many things in this life that really can't do anything about, but that God wants us to do something with."  She continues, "The deepest things that I have learned in my own life have come from the deepest suffering."

We can start by living life with gratitude.  Elliot has lived her life with gratitude, and looked toward her own transfiguration.  God works in us redemptively to shape us into his image.  "God calls us to stand alongside Him, to offer our sufferings to Him for His transfiguration and to fill up in our poor human flesh."  Amen, sister. 


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!