Let Me Be A Woman Compassion / Elisabeth Elliot / Children / Mothers Day Series

Prayer #15 for Your Children:  Generosity

Grant that my children may be generous and willing to share and so lay up treasures for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age.  (1 Timothy 6:18-19)

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Let Me Be A Woman by Elisabeth Elliot

Chapter 15:  God Sets No Traps

I love what she says:  The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact that I am a Christian does make me a different kind of woman...my whole life is an offering back to Him of all that I am and all that He wants me to be.

Elisabeth discusses the thoughts of  a woman named Ruth Benedict, a well-known  anthropologist  in the early 1900s.   Her candid journal describes her longing for a great love even though she achieved the "success" and recognition  of the world.  "A great love is given to very few. Perhaps this is the makeshift time-filler of a job  is our lifework after all."  

Elisabeth goes on to discuss the  feminist idea that even the most demeaning, boring, routine 9-5 job is elevated to a higher status than being a wife and mother.   An opposing view from  a reader of an offensive article on this subject wrote:  "I cannot understand why a woman would object to being a part of the  compassion trap--the need to serve others and provide tenderness and compassion. This is what the world really needs."  

It seems that there is a responsibility for us to develop just those nurturing character qualities, not deny them either to ourselves or to the people we come in contact with.   The significance of demonstrating them to a lost world cannot be under emphasized.  In compassionate and serving women, society sees the tender loving side of God.  How we behave is always a choice but if we refuse to fulfill the whole vocation of womanhood, we settle for a caricature, a pseudo-personhood. This was not the way we were created to be.