The Elusive Song

I was challenged by the following piece of prose while reading The Journals of Jim Elliot. This is a book I return to repeatedly. Jim Elliot's journal entries were collected by his wife Elisabeth and published in book form. His honesty and transparency is brutally refreshing!

As you are likely aware, Elliot is one of five American missionaries who met a martyr's death in Ecuador back in the mid 50's.

Elliot writes:

"I sought song inside
but found a heart of brick unused to singing,
and the words came very slow. It seemed as if the gentle
pressure of the Father's finger
had caused a slight crevasse midst all the hardness,
and there, down deep, there bubbled up a quiet spring.
But still no song,
just risings which never reached above the surface.
And though there was no singing, somehow there was a
harmony not often heard among clattering temporalities.
Love was the keynote of the deep spring's song.
A major key that lent fullness to the pool.
Peace and joy chimed softly,
and other little recesses opened in the hardness,
and gentleness, born of the fractures of sorrow,
flowed unhindered to fill the rising pool.
And as the music played, the brick dissolved,
and my soul was happy, though there were still no words."