Accstance With Joy

One of the most profound truths I have learned in recent years is "Acceptance with Joy" there are many things that happen in this broken old world that I don't like.  I change the things I can and should change, there are things that are beyond my ability to change and sometimes God is urging me to move to a place of acceptance. This gives me peace in the midst of the storm knowing that God is using this difficult thing, person or circumstance to shape me into the image of Christ. An artist or sculptor must use a hammer and chisel a file and sandpaper to chip away all that is not necessary to the sculpture. We are living sculptures and God is shaping us with uncomfortable but necessary tools. Acceptance with Joy is illustrated by author Hannah Hurnard.

Quote from hinds feet to high places by hannah hurnard

In all that great desert, there was not a single green thing growing, neither tree nor flower nor plant save here and there a patch of straggly gray cacti. On the last morning {Much Afraid} was walking near the tents and huts of the desert dwellers, when in a lonely corner behind a wall she came upon a little golden-yellow flower, growing all alone. An old pipe was connected with a water tank. In the pipe was one tiny hole through which came an occasional drop of water. Where the drops fell one by one, there grew the little golden flower, though where the seed had come from, Much-Afraid could not imagine, for there were no birds anywhere and no other growing things. She stopped over the lonely, lovely little golden face, lifted up so hopefully and so bravely to the feeble drip, and cried out softly, “What is your name, little flower, for I never saw one like you before.” The tiny plant answered at once in a tone as golden as itself, “Behold me! My name is Acceptance-with-Joy!“ Much-Afraid thought of the things which she had seen… Somehow the answer of the little golden flower which grew all alone in the waste of the desert stole into her heart and echoed there faintly and sweetly, filling her with comfort. She said to herself, “He (the Shepherd) has brought me here when I did not want to come, for His own purpose. I, too, will look up into His face and say, ‘Behold me! I am your little handmaiden, Acceptance-with-Joy