No Graven Image

Elisabeth Elliot

Description

First published in 1966, No Graven Image is the only novel of the best-selling author Elisabeth Elliot. Margaret, an intrepid twenty-five-year-old missionary, travels to the Andes Mountains of Ecuador to start her ministry. She sees little progress at first, but eventually gains a following and an enhanced reputation for her part in the safe and seemingly miraculous delivery of a breech baby. Things seem to be going well. She works on her translation of the Bible into the Indian language and befriends a native and his family. Then tragedy strikes, shaking Margaret's entire way of thinking.Full of excitement, human emotion, and exotic South American culture and color, No Graven Image is sure to captivate new readers everywhere.

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441239297
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

© 1966, 1982, 2003 by Elisabeth Elliot
Published by Revell a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.revellbooks.com
First printing, August 2004
Previously published in 2003 by Servant Publications
Ebook edition created 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-3929-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
To Tom, my brother, who is also my friend
Contents
Cover
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Preface
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
Backcover
Preface
No Graven Image is my only novel. When I wrote it, I felt that the implications of my message would best be conveyed in the garb of fiction. As it turned out, many readers would have preferred a happily-ever-after ending and they have remonstrated with me about the plot, saying “I just can’t believe that God would allow things like this to happen.” Sorry, folks, He does.
Now in our time of live news broadcasts from war zones, perhaps this message will be more acceptable. It is biblical and true to what our God permits in human affairs. Since we ourselves remain quite deficient in sovereign power (and even if we had it, we would not have enough divine savvy to know how to use it), it simply doesn’t matter that we might run the universe differently if we were on His throne. God works in mysterious ways, and His kingdom is full of apparent paradoxes. Evelyn Underhill said, “If God were small enough to be understood, He wouldn’t be big enough to be worshiped.”
Please be aware that I am not Margaret, in spite of the first-person narrative. Although my own missionary efforts were centered in the jungle, I also know the magnificent mountain vistas and the squalor of the hovels portrayed in these pages, and I could not have written with such meticulous detail about life among the Quichuas had I not been myself a gringa in Ecuador. The country is colorful and its people are earthy. God is still reaching out to them as He reaches out to all of us, whether we are named Elisabeth or Margaret or Pedro or Rosa. His kingdom encompasses the earth.
My hope is that a new generation of readers may enjoy No Graven Image, and that the unhurried simplicity of the story will satisfy the need for a reflective hiatus in our express-lane world.
Chapter One
I nside the railway car there was a vacuum of stillness which seemed to shut in the passengers, making us acutely conscious of the slightest sound or movement. For no good reason, I was listening, hardly drawing breath. It was not quite six o’clock in the morning. Everyone else was half-asleep and thoroughly chilled, for the sun had not yet risen, but they waited with for more patience than I for the train to begin its journey up into the western cordillera of the Andes and down to the coast. It had been scheduled to leave at half past five, and although I had been in Ecuador long enough to learn to expect delays, I was especially eager to begin the last leg of what had been a very long journey, a whole life’s preparation for missionary work among mountain Indians.
The door opened, relieving the vacuum, and a timid voice spoke. Little suitcases. Toys. One sucre.”
A woman in a plaid shawl and long wool skirt came in, steering a basket in front of her between the closely set seats. She saw me as soon as I turned. A foreigner was always a likely customer.
“Only one sucre, señorita.” She stopped by my seat, proffering the basket with a look of humility and hope.
One sucre. About five cents. I took one of the tiny valises from the basket. It was made of layers of newspaper, pasted together and covered with an imitation leather paper. There were a little handle and a strap with a gold-colored buckle to fasten it shut. The valise measured perhaps two inches across.
“Did you make it?” I asked.
“Si, señorita. I made it myself.”
“But what a lot of work! One sucre, did you say?”
“Si, señorita, one sucre, no more. It is not very expensive, señorita. Look at how nicely it is made. It is very pretty. Just one sucre.”
“Oh no, it is not very expensive,” I agreed. “I don’t see how you can make money on it at all.”
“Well, I don’t make much, señorita, but it is something. I have six children. I try to care for them. Sometimes my daughter helps me. She is twelve. She can paste the paper for me. Don’t you want one, señorita?”
“Yes, I want one.” I put the sucre into her hand and took the little suitcase. I would find some child to give it to. An Indian child, perhaps. The MacDonalds, who were to meet me at the end of the train trip, were older. Their children were grown.
It would be nice to be met this time by experienced missionaries, and to stay in their home. My arrival in Guayaquil, six months before, had been quite different. The thin line of shore that I could see when the ship dropped anchor was like a line drawn to mark off a section of my life. When I crossed it, everything would change. The days aboard ship had given me a taste of a world I had never known and would not know again, a world of luxuries such as Camembert cheese, deft waiters, soft music at dinner. Standing on deck during the last moments before disembarking I felt a feint wind stir my hair and I turned to face it, closed my eyes, and tried to see the far off shore with its palm trees and thatched huts, the brown children running on the sand where the wind came from. It would not be long. Unaccountably, I wished that it would be. The door opened behind me, giving forth the breath of the little world within—cooled air, smelling of perfumes, cigarette smoke, steaks, alcohol. I wanted to prolong, not just indefinitely but forever, those timeless days of the voyage, when I was no longer preparing to be a missionary nor had yet become one. The irresponsibility was intoxicating. Now I would have to cross the line.
I went below and put a few last things into my suitcase. My leather-bound Bible lay on the dresser and I reached toward it for reassurance. “Fear thou not, for I am with thee.” The Bible had opened easily at that passage, for it was a favorite of mine and it was to me now the voice of God. I left the ship, and then there had been the trip upriver by launch and my first night in an Ecuadorian hotel, with its smell of plaster, mold, cheap soap and floor wax; the smothering heat, the short bed and unyielding pillow, the sounds of coughing and spitting in the hall, of dogs barking in the streets. A clock had boomed out the hour and the half hour, a mosquito sang his thin song close to my ear, and a trumpet in a nearby dance hall had hooted and shrilled. The place of God’s choice for me, I had reflected, so little discomforts, little sacrifices, were to be welcomed.
“Toys, sir? Suitcases, señora? Toys for your children. Only one sucre.” The poor woman was back, making another attempt to sell her trinkets. Small chance that anyone in the next car had bought one—it was second class, with long wooden benches facing the center on which huddled Indians in ponchos and women with great cloth bundles and baskets. The toy vendor’s voice was drowned much of the time by the strident cries of white-aproned women on the platform who were selling plates of cooked food.
In front of me sat a man in a black hat and a dark red poncho, cradling a burlap-wrapped package on his lap; the smell of the damp wool of his poncho was mixed with the heavy sweet smell of brilliantine with which his wife had slicked her black braid. Across the aisle were two men in black suits and black ties, reading newspapers. Three children a little ahead of them had turned one of the seats around to make a cubicle of privacy. With their mother they made a small cosmos, squirming and twisting in the seats as they arranged themselves and their bundles, looking at last with satisfaction at one another. There was no one else in the train, so far as they were concerned. Yes, there was. One of them spied me. Three other feces turned toward me. La gringa! Look at the gringuita! There was that word again—the foreigner—but I was used to it now. I had heard it a hundred times in the streets of Guayaquil, and later in Ambato, where I studied Spanish. They turned back and looked solemnly at their mother as though their security had been jeopardized. The two who faced me shifted their eyes quickly toward me now and then, and I tried to meet their glances with a smile. I wouldn’t hurt you. Really, I am not dangerous, even if I am a gringa. They pretended they hadn’t seen.
“Eggs! Fresh-cooked eggs!” A woman stuck her head in the car, and behind her another pushed in and shrieked, “Eggs! Potatoes! Tender corn!”
A whistle screamed, the train suddenly hissed and jerked, the two vendors lurched against the doorway and scrambled for the platform. Poor things! How much could they make in that business? I looked out the window and saw the woman pass with her little suitcases, the supply apparently undiminished.
“Now we are going!” cried the children.
“Shut up!” said the mother.
Another tremendous crash, a great grinding and clatter, and the train began to move.
I should have bought ten of those toy valises, I thought. At least ten. I could have done that for the poor woman. I twisted my neck to see if I could still see her. Yes. There she stood with her basket. I felt that she was looking at me, though we had moved too far away to be sure. She was still standing there as a curve in the track put us out of sight.
I was on my way. Not yet a bona fide missionary, not quite yet. But soon. . .
It was impossible to arrange my knees com