Her Name is Evelyn (EVE-a-lin)

… Why hadn't I paid more attention and what could this new holiday mean in my faithfulness to Christ and intimacy with God?

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“There is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.”  C.S. Lewis
 

Hi Friends,
 
Here we are again. Today I’ve got a special episode for you. Maybe an introduction, to a new holiday. I know it was for me until a few years ago.
 
It’s November 1st, “All Saints Day” and I’m thinking about my very first spiritual hero and how powerfully God used her in my life.
 
Her name is Evelyn (that’s EVE-a-lin) Underhill.
 
When the instructor of my second-year Spiritual Companioning class told us we needed to pick a spiritual giant to walk with, I remembered her from the heroes of the faith, we had learned about in year one. I was more comfortable with her than others with the “St.” prefix at the beginning of their names.
 
Evelyn was born in London in 1875, the only child of affluent, agnostic parents. Both her father and husband were successful lawyers. She was fully engaged in the life of London’s upper society as well as lecturing at prominent universities and writing over 30 books, many under the pseudonym of “John Cordelier” before it was acceptable for women to be authors.
 
From her earliest years, she was hungry to understand spiritual truth. She came to know Christ in her early 20s through her interest in literature, exploring the works of other spiritual giants, such as Meister Eckhart and St. John of the Cross. Her writing was captivating and full of accounts of personal, active love between her and her Savior. She became more and more revered for her writing about spiritual truth. In her 40s, she began teaching the Anglican Church leaders, at a time when women did not teach men, that everyone could regularly hear the voice of God.
 
She was different as a church figure in that she did not only encourage people in their church attendance and ministries but emphasized times of solitude and ecstasy in their relationship with the Lord. Creating opportunities for others to come away, and experience God’s presence and heart for them apart from all the “doing” it is so easy to get lost in in our religious devotion, she led 6-8 retreats a year.
 
Just listen to this quote,

“We mostly spend our lives conjugating three verbs: to want, to have, and to do. Craving, clutching, and fussing on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual, even on the religious and we are kept in perpetual unrest; forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance except as they are transcended by the fundamental verb, to “be” and that “being”, not wanting, having, and doing is the essence of a spiritual life. Like a chalet in the Alps, that homely existence gains atmosphere, dignity, and significance from the greatness of the sky and the background of the everlasting hills.”   Evelyn Underhill
 
She taught that God’s first desire was not what we could do for him and his kingdom but for intimacy with his children in times of solitude. Then, that love would serve as an active force pushing us out, “to do”, in the world that he loves.
 
Evelyn was a human example of a married woman living within the same century in intimacy with God amidst a busy, productive life. She was good company, lived in a comfortable middle-class house, gave parties, took road trips with her husband, and loved sailing. She was a picture of what I wanted to be myself.  
 
It was 2017. God had just given Bryan and I the property that would become the Sanctuary at Bear Creek.  After tasting the utter fulfillment of intimacy with God through the experience of silence and solitude retreats, I was compelled, even as I shook in my boots, to invite others to taste of that same goodness, coming away on three-day prayer retreats.
 
Here was a woman, preaching the same message I felt burning within me. Giving me the courage that if she could do it in the 1940s and 50s, when women were to be silent homemakers, not standing up front in huge cathedrals or prestigious universities, I could surely do it in my generation where women’s voices are just as esteemed as men’s and a woman is serving as vice president.
 
The strength I gained from walking with Evelyn, got me wondering if God had other heroes of the faith, in addition to those I had studied in the Bible, that he specifically wanted to use to strengthen me in my race, helping me accomplish the purposes that he had assigned me?
 
Why hadn’t I paid more attention, beyond watching an occasional movie like Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire or Corrie Ten Boom in The Hiding Place, to the power and provision of the heroes of the faith in my life as a believer?
 
What might God have for me that I hadn’t noticed before? What could this new holiday, observed on November 1st, All Saints Day, where we pause to think about “the saints who have gone before us” mean for my faithfulness to Christ’s commission and intimacy with God?  
 
See this Blog article as well, “What Am I Supposed to Do with the Saints Anyway?” to prayerfully think about that a little more.