Loving Christ
"For me to live to Christ seems natural
enough, for I have been driven to Him not only by sorrow but
by sin. Every outbreak of my hasty temper sends me weeping and penitent to the
foot of the cross, and I love him much because I have been forgiven
much."
Dear Katherine meets and marries a quiet, dark eyed doctor
but her sufferings and her sorrow at her own character flaws and sins do not
cease. Through deaths and debt, tragedies and trifles, Prentiss pushes her
character heavenward as she prays and listens to the wise counsel of those He
has been pleased to place around her. In fiction Prentiss can rebuke us with
those things that it would be very hard to accept if pointed out by even the
kindest friend. Things that would be easy to read in a non-fiction Christian
book, and all too easy to forget.
As a mother and a wife, Katherine's experiences living as a
woman in the nineteenth century may be quite different from our own in so many
ways, and yet I think that many of us could easily relate to her frustrations. She
laments the difficulties with the in-laws and the never-ending demands upon her
time from her family and those living in need around her. She knows that she
needs to slow down and to take care of her own physical and spiritual health,
but she feels the pull towards her duties:
"I feel .
. . that I am willing to count all things but dross that I may win Christ. But
when I come home to my worldly cares, I get completely absorbed in them . . . I
wonder if people of my temperament ever get toned down and learn to take life
coolly?"
But despite her
awareness of her deficiencies, she has moved so far away from the young girl
who once told her pastor’s wife that she wanted a life where she would be “perfectly well and perfectly happy. And a
pleasant home, of course, I must have friends to love me and like me, too. And
I can’t get along without some pretty, tasteful things about me.” Katherine now sees her hardships and
trials as gifts from God that He has ordained for her benefit. She has become
much more like her mother than she realises. When she meets a certain Miss
Clifford who until her incapacitation from illness had led the aforementioned charmed
life, she is able to answer the question “What
is it you know, and that I do not know, that makes you so satisfied while I am
so dissatisfied?” She leads others to Christ when she helps them understand their need to rely on the absolute sufficiency of His death.
But one of my favourite bits of the whole book has to be when she offers the
kind of comeback to Miss Clifford that you would dream of when someone tries to
demean the role of stay-at-home mothers:
“Then
you will permit me to say that when you speak contemptuously of the vocation of
maternity, you dishonour not only the mother who bore you but the Lord Jesus
himself, who chose to be born of a woman and to be ministered unto by her
throughout a helpless infancy.”
That’s a bit long for a
bumper sticker. Maybe I could have it put onto a t-shirt?
I hope that you are enjoying your Summer reading and are looking forward to the titles that are coming up this year.
About this month's contributor, Rachael Collins
Rachael Collins is a Jane Austen fan who often finds it amusing that she is married to Mr Collins who is indeed a minister. She is an English/ History teacher who has taken a break from teaching in order to devote more time to reading children's literature. Her three children are the happy beneficiaries of this decision. Rachael enjoys gardening, drinking tea and sorting her wardrobe according to colour. In between planning to plant a new church in Marsden Park, she really hopes to read a lot of books this year.