“Everything about which we are tempted to complain may be the very instrument whereby the Potter intends to shape His clay into the image of His Son–a headache, an insult, a long line at the check-out, someone’s rudeness or failure to say thank you, misunderstanding, disappointment, interruption. As Amy Carmichael said, ‘See in it a chance to die,’ meaning a chance to leave self behind…”(Elisabeth Elliot)

A quote like this seems to be so far removed from current American Christianity as to almost be another religion. Actually, it’s a lot closer to New Testament faith than what a lot of churches and professing believers hold to.

But it’s not easy. I have a well-developed sense of injury. I don’t like it when people mistreat other people, especially when that other person is me. I want instant vindication. I say I want justice but what I really want is more like revenge.

But seeing an insult as a chance to die to self? That seems like a foreign concept. But it wasn’t to Jesus. Look at how He kept quiet during the farce that passed for a Sanhedrin trial. He was unjustly tried, convicted, and murdered, but not only did He accept it as from the Father, He forgave the very people who killed Him while they were in the very act of killing Him.

If Jesus did that for me, surely I can suffer inconvenience and insult. I can handle a headache from time to time. But it all starts with the right attitude and the right perspective. Philippians 2:5 says for us to have the mind or attitude of Christ and goes on to list a downward trajectory from heavenly throne to earthly manger, from human to slave, from rejected to murdered.

To die to self is to come alive to Christ in me. That’s the real life anyway. Not me hanging on to my perceived rights and nursing grudges and bitterness, but choosing the way of forgiveness and acceptance as from the very hand of God, seeing it as God’s way of shaping me into the very image of Christ.