5. All My Desire Is before Thee
5
All My Desire Is before Thee
One summer evening in 1949 I was sitting on a rustic bench on the side of Mount Tabor in Portland, Oregon. At a respectful distance beside me sat the man I loved and longed with all my soul to marry. More than a year had passed since he had confessed his love for me. It appeared that the missionary work to which each of us had been called might require that we remain single.
This man, like my father, loved all of God’s outdoors, saw in it the overwhelming evidence of His power and the lavish gifts of His love. We reveled in it together. There was a warm breeze, filled with the warm fragrance of Douglas firs. The lights of the city winked below us, and beyond them in the moonlight stood the luminous majesty of Mount Hood.
“Happy the race of men, if that love were to rule your hearts which rules the heavens!” wrote Boethius from the dungeon where he awaited his death in the fifth century. I wanted to be ruled by that Love, but found myself in danger of being ruled by a lesser.
Although I don’t think the word occurred in our conversation that evening, it was the undercurrent of all we talked about: loneliness. I would soon be leaving for home in New Jersey. Would we ever meet again? When? Where? Were we to be single forever? Please, Lord, no, my heart was saying, I will die without him. I knew in my head that God’s love would never give less than the best. My heart was convinced that marriage to this man was “the best,” but my head argued that my heart might be mistaken. I still wanted what God wanted to give—nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. Was I deceiving myself? Would I still submit to the rule of the Love that rules the heavens?
These were the things going through my mind. I kept most of them to myself, however, determined to bare my feelings to no man until he had proposed—and even then to be extremely cautious, for an emotional striptease leads to a physical one far more quickly than most of us are prepared for.
Jim pointed out something in the Bible I had not noticed before. I was startled by it.
“Everyone has his own particular gift from God, some one thing and some another.”
There he goes again, I thought, quoting Scripture. Jim Elliot was a walking Bible. Knew it backwards and forwards, and was forever nailing me with verses exactly suited to pierce to the very marrow.
“Ever think about that one, Betts?” he said. “Singleness is a gift. ‘To those who are unmarried or widowed, I say definitely that it is a good thing to remain unattached, as I am.’ That’s the apostle Paul talking” (1 Cor. 7:7–8 Phillips).
It sounded like him all right. Not very palatable just now. Singleness, if it was a gift, held no attraction for me. I was nearly twenty-three and my friends were getting married in rapid succession. I, only I, was left. And here beside me, on this lovely evening in this idyllic place, living and breathing (I was tinglingly aware even of his breathing), sat the man I would give anything in the world to marry. But was he asking me to marry him? Nothing of the sort. He was asking me to see my solitary status as a gift.
My call to missionary work was certainly a gift. It was a vocation and a privilege. But celibacy? That was a vocation for nuns. I hardly thought of it as a privilege, and who besides nuns would call it a gift? If it was any of those things for me, I devoutly hoped it would not last a lifetime.
Years before that talk on Mount Tabor, I had made up my mind that I wanted one thing beyond all things: I wanted to know Christ. By the time I was twelve I had read Pilgrim’s Progress and many missionary stories, and was aware that this ambition was going to cost me something. I began slowly to learn that Christ can be known only in the path of obedience. “Every man who knows my commandments and obeys them is the man who really loves me, and every man who really loves me will himself be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and make myself known to him” (John 14:17 Phillips, italics added).
Obedience proves love, and love opens the heart to knowledge. Never a day goes by that does not bring fresh opportunities to know Him—if only we will do what He says. It is easy enough to give assent to the principle, once it is pointed out. It is not so easy to recognize our chance to put it into practice, especially when that chance comes in an unpalatable form. This huge unfulfilled desire—a means for knowing Christ? I could not see it that way.
“The path of obedience” meant missionary life for me. I felt sure of that, and embraced the prospect with joy. My eagerness was not unmixed with ignoble motives—it’s nice to think you may do something for God and be admired for it. But now another issue nettled me: What if obedience meant not just missionary life but Old Maid missionary life?
I crept quietly to bed that night so as not to waken Jane, Jim’s sister, who shared her room with me. I lay awake, having a silent dialogue with the Lord. He seemed to be asking, “What do you want more than anything else in the world?”
Jim Elliot was the first answer that sprang to mind. But I had not forgotten my ten-year commitment (God help me, I could not change it). Hoping I spoke the truth, I answered, “To know You, Lord.”
“Do you want My will, at any cost?”
The truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth couldn’t pull any wool over God’s eyes. Was it yes to this question?
“Yes, Lord.”
About two years earlier, before I had known of Jim’s attraction to me, I had written:
Perhaps some future day, Lord, Thy strong hand
Will lead me to the place where I must stand
Utterly alone.
Alone, O Gracious Lover, but for Thee;
I shall be satisfied if I can see
Jesus only.
I do not know Thy plan for years to come,
My spirit finds in Thee its perfect home,
Sufficiency.
Lord, all my desire is before Thee now,
Lead on, no matter where, no matter how—
I trust in Thee.
As well as I could, I laid all my desire once more before Him to whom all desire is known and from whom no secrets are hidden. The next day I boarded a bus for Philadelphia with no guarantee that I would see Jim again.