Women’s Connect Devotional April 2022
Ladies,
Take some time to enjoy this beautiful devotional written by Lauren Akers. May it spur us on to keep our eyes on the Lord and His will over all else. Thank you, Lauren, for these powerful words!
Lilias Trotter found herself in crisis. A gifted English artist in the 1800s, she had fame and success at her fingertips. The foremost art critic of the day, and her mentor, John Ruskin considered her artistic talent so great that her work would become “immortal” if she gave her life wholly to her craft. But Lilias had other passions tugging at her heart. A spiritual movement in England ignited her faith during her twenties, compelling her to reach out to London’s lower-class working women, including the prostitutes at Victoria Station. Her heart for the downtrodden kept her from her practice with Ruskin who was worried she was throwing away her potential. She was at a crossroads between something good and something better.
At age 35, she decided to surrender her art profession and follow God’s call to North Africa for mission work. For 40 years she served the Algerians faithfully until she died in 1928. Her legacy included 13 mission stations and a team of 30 people who continued the work she began. In retrospect, it is said that she pioneered means, methods, and materials that were 100 years before her time. Impressive for a woman who had no experience with international missions and didn’t even know the language when she arrived 40 years prior! Since art was an intrinsic part of herself, she still practiced while in her ministry years. Art was her medium with which she saw and expressed God working out His purposes in Algeria. She wrote devotional literature and recorded her surroundings in her journals with watercolor and strong sketches. These diaries left a lasting legacy of both beauty and truth.
It’s clear to us now, that Lilias came to the right choice. How difficult or confusing it must have been to lay down her talents and earthly successes. How overwhelming it must have been to leave everything she knew, the high society to which she was accustomed, to live out the rest of her life as a servant. By all accounts, she was living a good life. She had a good plan set out in front of her. There would be nothing necessarily compromising her faith should she have chosen to stay in London and study her craft. But God had a clear call on her life, and she answered faithfully.
There are many things to admire about Lilias’ faithful walk with the Lord, (if you want to know more about her, search for the documentary “Many Beautiful Things” on Youtube!) but the thing that impresses me the most is her dogged focus on the mission God set before her. There are many good gifts and talents that God gives us. Our jobs, families, and hobbies are common graces from a good Father, meant for our enjoyment. But even good gifts can take our focus off of the better gift.
I love this excerpt from one of Lilias’ poems titled “Focused: A Story and a Song” (fun fact: this poem inspired Helen H. Lemmel to write the treasured Hymn “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus”) :
“And they lie all around, these interests. Never has it been so easy to live in half a dozen good harmless worlds at once—art, music, social science, games, motoring, the following of some profession, and so on. And between them we run the risk of drifting about, the “good” hiding the “best” even more effectually than it could be hidden by downright frivolity with its smothered heartache at its own emptiness.
It is easy to find out whether our lives are focused, and if so, where the focus lies. Where do our thoughts settle when consciousness comes back in the morning? Where do they swing back when the pressure is off during the day? Does this test not give the clue? Then dare to have it out with God—and after all, that is the shortest way. Dare to lay bare your whole life and being before Him, and ask Him to show you whether or not all is focused on Christ and His glory. Dare to face the fact that unfocused, good and useful as it may seem, it will prove to have failed of its purpose.”
If you find yourself holding onto the good with the fervor you should be holding onto the better, pray this with me today: Lord, let us fear more the slow drift away from your will than the “wasting of potential” or chasing after earthly distractions. Help us to be sensitive to your leading, and willing to loosen the grasp we have on our comforts or successes. Make us aware of your goodness in all circumstances, even if they look different from what we’ve planned. And help us to live focused lives, looking to Christ’s wonderful face so all else becomes strangely dim. Thank you for your correction when our gaze wanders. You alone are our glory and our prize.
Amen.
Read:
-To read the rest of “Focused: A Story and a Song” https://ililiastrotter.wordpress.com/out-of-print-manuscripts/
-Hebrews 12:1-3
Listen:
-The Glorious Christ Live, “Turn Your Eyes” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2tKVqZZiI4