“To stop our frantic getting, spending, and searching,” she says in “The Path of Loneliness, ” “and simply to look at the things God has made is to move one step away from despair. For God cares.” If anyone had cause for bitterness over the loss and pain she endured, it was Elliot. Yet she tells us that “it is possible both to accept and to endure loneliness [and by extension, all forms of suffering].” How do we do so? [Elisabeth] Elliot gives us the answer: “In circumstances for which there is no final answer in the world, we have two choices: accept them as God’s wise and loving choice for our blessing (this is called faith), or resent them as proof of His indifference, His carelessness, even His non-existence (this is unbelief).”
