"What About the R.O.U.S.?"

from the mildly annoying yet still profoundly true allegory, Hinds Feet on High Places:


"Here are the two guides which I promised," said the Shepherd quietly. "From now on until you are over the steep and difficult places, they will be your companions and helpers.... They are good teachers, indeed, I have few better.... This," said he, motioning toward the first of the silent figures, "is named Sorrow. And the other is her twin sister, Suffering."

"....I can't go with them," she gasped. "I can't! I can't! O my Lord Shepherd, why do you do this to me? How can I travel in their company? It is more than I can bear. You tell me that the mountain way itself is so steep and difficult that I cannot climb it alone. Then why, oh why, must you make Sorrow and Suffering my companions? Couldn't you have given Joy and Peace to go with me, to strengthen me and encourage me and help me on the difficult way?"

Let Sorrow do its work, send grief or pain;
Sweet are thy messengers, sweet their refrain.
If they but work in me, more love, O Christ, to thee,
More love to thee, more love to thee.

"Humiliations galore..."

"The pattern of Christ, as set before us in the New Testament, is in every case a pattern of humiliation, suffering, sacrifice." "In every case." This made me search for confirmation or otherwise of so strong a statement, though I knew that the writer (Westcott) would not have made it unless he had been sure that it was true. Perhaps the question comes, We have common work to do (gardening, sewing, cooking, and so on), what have these three great words, Humiliation, Suffering, Sacrifice, to do with us?

Humiliation: Do we like to be praised? Do we find it difficult if mistakes are shown? Which matters most to us--that the work should be well done or that people should know that we did that work? Is our "I" in the dust?

Suffering: When we stand for truth are we ever misunderstood? Then what do we do?

Sacrifice: What comes first in our choice--our Lord's wish or our own?

If we answer these questions honestly I think we shall understand how we can begin to learn to follow the pattern set by Christ our Lord. He must have begun to follow that pattern when, to the eyes of the village, He was just a boy in a carpenter's shop.

--from Edges of His Ways, by Amy Carmichael