Expectation Corner Emily Steele Elliott (1892)

CONFLICTING DUTIES
heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord,
the Creator of the ends of the earth,
fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no
searching of His understanding. He giveth
power to the faint: and to them that have
no might He increaseth strength. Even the
youths shall faint and be weary, and the
young men shall utterly fall. But they that
wait upon the Lord shall renew their
strength; they shall mount up with wings
as eagles; they shall run and not be weary;
and they shall walk and not faint.’
“Therefore remember—you who
would know the rest in service which this
passage should establish for you—that
God’s infinity as your Creator demands, as
He Himself here stoops to explain to us,
infinite minuteness in the ordering of
every detail of your daily lives. You who,
from deepest sense of your own unworthiness,
are inclined to exclaim, ‘My way is
hid from the Lord, the knowledge of me is
passed over from my God—I am too low
down, too insignificant to claim His individual
care and thought’—see in the glories
of the orbs above you, the pledges of
planning and guidance which touch your
smallest actions, and what you might be
inclined to call the most trivial incidents of
your lives. Remember that it is not only
that the Love witnessed by the gift of His
Son pledges itself to shape your life for
your great blessedness and for His glory.
Were it possible for this love to be left out,
the attributes of the God of the universe
demand it. No way too lowly, no path too
obscure, to be of importance in His sight
“‘Who gives its lustre to an insect’s
wing,
And wheels His throne upon the rolling
worlds.’
“But write across the life of the
weakest and humblest in this congregation
the one word ‘redeemed,’ and what does
that involve on the part of the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? He, the
Son, knew, as the strife approached, and
the ‘Nevertheless’ was to be spoken on
which hung the weight of the whole
world’s redemption, all that His disciples
would need of assurance concerning an
ever-present love and a never-dying
companionship.
“‘Jesus answered and said, If a man
love Me, he will keep my words; and My
Father will love him, and We will come
unto him, and make Our abode with him.’
“Dear brother or sister, fearful of
claiming too much of your Father’s minute
attention, deeming yourself unworthy to
grasp this individual, personal care and
ordering, seek rather to glorify Him by
claiming up to these words, by rising to
the height of your charter, by learning, as
stargazers of old were exhorted to learn on
the plains of Chaldea, that your individual
covenant reaches to the heavens, and is inscribed
in God’s own handwriting on our
midnight sky:
“‘The voice which rolls the stars along
Spake all the promises.’”
CHAPTER IV.
FROM that week Mrs. Stanton’s was a
changed life. More listening, less struggling;
less attempted, more effected; a
communion sustained, rather than interrupted,
by every-day calls and occupations;
outer work often abridged that soulwork
might have room; the current of life
deepened rather than widened; rest found
in service, as well as rest received for
service; the peace of God entered into as
an inheritance having for its title-deed
peace with God; sickness and suffering—
and such came to her life—solemnly
recognized as part of His plan, and,
consequently, not as a break in service, but
as a call to higher service; bereavement, as
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