53 - "Thus We Count the Cost"

“AT LAST I venture to send a little word in answer to your dear notes to me. It seems so precious to my heart that you have let me into your confidence, even a little, in this most precious of experiences.” Mary Elizabeth Judd to whom this letter was addressed Mrs. R. had known since she was three years old. “I have been so long separated from you that I have been unable to show you my interest, or any kindness, and you are now quite grown up from the dear little girl whom I had so truly in my heart. Our friendship has had to be an inner, invisible friendship—it gives me a little thrill to know you have let it be so and have taken me into your confidence as to God’s leadings in your dear, young life. “Oh, Mary Elizabeth, Jesus is so tender—He wants us ‘rooted and grounded’ in love—His love—filling you with Himself and overflowing unto others. I find it brings me into the memory of how He brought me into Himself—almost a secret between Himself and myself—just Himself. I had no one to tell me anything, no one ever had prayer for me. My heart and head were filled with earthly ambitions and young theories which would this day be called evolution, modernism, etc., and He came—and swept it all away with Himself, wonderful Jesus. “No, I did not have the light you have, of course. I was going into real infidelity with my theories. I had to pray, as I believe few pray, before I was even sure there was a God, but—He ‘took me out of the miry clay.’ He ‘put a song in my mouth’ and ‘established my goings.’ All love—love—love! What did it matter what He took from me? ‘Was it sorrow Though thousand worlds were lost? Our eyes have looked on Jesus, And thus we count the cost.’ Let it be so all through, Mary Elizabeth. Count your cost of any sacrifice to be only the parting from that which would delay your knowing Him more, that you may be unfettered to run swiftly and joyfully after Him. “Just another thought, it’s not just a joyous path, or pleasures, but it’s Himself. It is well to remember, from the beginning, ‘The perfect way is hard to flesh. It is not hard to love.’ And now instead of writing on as I feel, and speaking of yourself and things you have written, I must stop, trusting you will just accept this little ‘thank you’ for thinking of me and telling me glad news. “Maybe God will put something in your heart again for me. And may He abundantly bless you, dear, yet further, is my prayer. “Your friend in Him, our Friend.”