TRANSFORMATION

The following is an extract from a letter from Miss Lydia Muhs, written from the U.S.S.R. in May 1934. She lived for a long time in overcrowded and uncongenial conditions and in one letter wrote, ‘My little room is a Bethany and an Emmaus’. She wrote— ‘I read today, “But we all, looking on the glory of the Lord, with unveiled face, are transformed according to the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit’, 2 Corinthians 3: 18. We human beings bear in ourselves unconscious traces of what we are.

Those who come from the anvil, the mortar and lime, from the stable and the barn, from the plough and the field, carry the traces of their work with them. If anyone comes home with a basketful of fruit, we observe that he comes from a farm, and if his hands are full of wild plums, we say, ‘You have been in the fields’. How much more will one who walks with God in heaven through prayer, faith, love and hope, carry in his eyes, in his heart and ways, the holy traces of such a holy intercourse. So just as little as it could remain hidden from the people that Moses had been with Jehovah for forty days and forty nights (Exodus 34: 29–35), just so little can our intercourse with God and our communion with Christ remain hidden; Anyone who lives in the heavenly atmosphere will carry the odour of this into his surroundings and for the blessing of those around him. These thoughts gave me much joy. I am always asking the Lord in quietness to use me more and more in blessing in a quiet way, as also God said to Abram, “and thou shalt be a blessing”, Genesis 12: 2.