Elisabeth Elliot knew that true maturity, joy, and contentment has less to do with a mechanistic assessment of God’s plan, and more to do with being pushed and, at times shoved, against the breast of your Savior. Not a tidy, orderly list, but an earnest grappling with the angel of the Lord. When affliction decimates you, then you understand Elisabeth’s doctrine: The Bible’s answers are never to be separated from the God of the Bible. That rich truth then guided me through more than fifty years of paralysis, pain, and cancer.
