Saturday, Nov. 13, 2004 - 10:05 a.m.

Simple things

Elisabeth Elliot's Daily Devotional

Title: Starting a WOTTS Group

Author: Elisabeth Elliot

"Men and women who are committed to obedience to Titus 2:1-5 are desperately needed in the world, in the church, and in the home. Writing on what I called spiritual motherhood I referred to them as WOTTs (Women of Titus Two). A reader asks if I have guidelines, structure, organization, information about such a group. Well, not much--for this reason: as soon as you organize, you have to have meetings! What we don't need is one more meeting to take us away from our homes and telephones. My suggestions are simply these:

Pray. Ask God to show you the needs and ways in which you yourself can help. Pray (perhaps on the phone if it's difficult to get together) with one or two others who understand the need.
Ask your pastor if he might preach on the Titus passage. It will take courage for him to do this.
In Bible studies, Sunday School classes, over your kitchen table or wherever you have opportunity, raise the subject of spiritual motherhood. Tell others of the blessing your own spiritual mothers have been to you. (If you had none, find a model in a book, as I did in missionary author Amy Carmichael. Then seek to be one.)
Post a list on the church bulletin board of the WOTTs, women who earnestly desire to be available. Mothers (in the usual sense and in the spiritual) are people who must be available--not all the time, not to meet every demand, but as needs arise which they can meet. They are prepared to do so, no matter how humble and unsung the job. The deepest needs are for godly examples, ears to hear, shoulders to cry on, hearts to pray. Then there are the humble tasks which lighten others' burdens: drive someone to the doctor, do somebody's ironing, take a friend and go clean somebody's refrigerator and oven (jobs young mothers find it hard to get around to); babysit--in your house or theirs. Rock a baby, read a story, cook the supper, do the mending. Take an old person shopping and to lunch. Clean the house, do the gardening, write letters at his or her dictation or acquire some government postcards--so cheap, so easy to write a note on if you address them first."

EE always keeps things so simple. The only thing I would add is a Wottbox somewhere in the church, maybe the ladies' bathroom(!) where requests could be dropped in, and where one could choose a request to fill. That would do away with any need for meetings and also eliminate any pride

EE's devotional

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