Stages

"The truth is that none of us knows the will of God for his life.

I say for his life--for the promise is "as thou goest step by step I will open up the way before thee." He gives us enough light for today, enough strength for one day at a time, enough manna, our "daily" bread. And the life of faith is a journey from Point A to Point B, from Point B to Point C, as the people of Israel...

"It is not difficult when you read the whole story of God's deliverance of Israel to see how each separate incident fits into a pattern for good. We have perspective that those miserable wanderers didn't have. But it should help us to trust their God. The stages of their journey, dull and eventless as most of them were, were each a necessary part of the movement toward the fulfillment of the promise.

"[This] may be only a stage of a life's journey, but even a stage is a gift. God may replace it with another gift, but the receiver accepts His gifts with thanksgiving. This gift for this day. The life of faith is lived one day at a time, and it has to be lived--not always looked forward to as though the "real" living were around the next corner. It is today for which we are responsible. God still owns tomorrow."

--Elisabeth Elliot

(Let Me Be a Woman, chapter 10)