Passion and Purity
I started to read Passion and Purity, by Elizabeth Elliot, today. A book Lloyd and I gave Debbie for her baptism over a year ago. Debs told me she had been reading it and told me how good a book it was, offering to lend it to me for the two weeks she’ll be away in Hong Kong. It is, indeed, a good book. Apparently the author is the hero of Joshua Harris, the author of the I Kissed Dating Goodbye series many are familiar with. The first five chapters begins to touch on many questions and aspects of relationships and focus on God, to be frank nothing new for me. It is building up the context under which her struggles later appear. The book uses her past experience with an engaged relationship with Jim Elliot, who died in a missions trip, to convey her thoughts and learning experiences. A very readable book with messages I can relate to. It’s a book written from a woman’s account, but noted by Billy Graham to be “definitely for men, too”.
There were many hymns and poems and Bible verses interspersed with the writing. The last bit I read I find particularly interesting:
“One morning I was reading the story of Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand. The disciples could find only five loaves of bread and two fishes. “Let me have them,” said Jesus. He asked for all. He took them, said the blessing, and broke them before He gave them out. I rememebered what a chapel speaker, Ruth Stull of Peru, had said: ‘If my life is broken when given to Jesus, it is because pieces will feed a multitude, while a loaf will satisfy only a little lad.’ “