Expect God to Triumph In the Hardest Place

“Take the very hardest thing in your life – the place of difficulty, outward or inward, and expect God to triumph gloriously in that very spot. Just there He can bring your soul into blossom.” - Lilias Trotter in Parables of the Cross

I heard these words as I was watching a documentary about an inspiring missionary woman named Lilias Trotter. Lilias was a gifted European artist who felt the call of God to become a missionary and give up who she may have been as a renown artist. She came to a crisis point in her life where she felt that she had to make a choice. She chose to follow Christ and went to Algeria to pursue mission work.

To some outsiders, including the man who mentored her in art and truly loved her, this looked like a bewildering choice and major failure: giving up the prospect of marriage and status to serve outsiders in a dangerous foreign country. She didn’t know the culture or the language, the climate was harsh, and she was giving up her comfortable life in favor of the uncomfortable.

But God worked a wonder. He triumphed in Lilias’ life as a missionary. She found great joy and fulfillment in this path, while nurturing her artistic talents in new ways. 

Lilias’ life is a reminder that God wants to transform our deepest sufferings into something glorious and perhaps something that may not even on our radar. He wants to “make whole” all of our gifts, talents, and desires into something so much more meaningful than what we may have in mind for ourselves. This is what it means to be a whole, fruitful woman!

Did Lily give up artistry? No. Was it manifested in a new way? Yes. Perhaps as part of a wider plan for her life in accord with God’s mission.

Ultimately she found that it was more blessed to give (the path of missionary), than to receive (the path of an artist in receiving beauty).

So often as a woman in waiting, we are expecting and hoping to receive. Might we take a lesson from Lilias on the significance of giving?