It’s easy to judge such calloused behavior, but how are we doing? Some things have changed since Jane Austen’s day, that’s true. In many parts of the world, women have much more equality and power over their own lives now. Life insurance may soften the blow when the primary breadwinner dies. Social services may help the less fortunate. But despite all this, people are still homeless and still going hungry. Widows and orphans are still poor and vulnerable. We shouldn’t be surprised; Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you…” (Matthew 26:11)
So what can we do about a problem that, according to Jesus himself, will never be fully overcome? Instead of being discouraged, be inspired by the words of Isaiah 61:1-3.
THE SPIRIT of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion – to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.
People’s physical needs are important, yes, but so are their spiritual needs. God calls us to share the good news of the gospel, to soothe the brokenhearted, to give light to those held captive by darkness, and to comfort the grieving. To do these things for someone is to give them a beautiful, even royal, gift, replacing their ashes of despair with a crown of beauty. What a privilege to be invited to bestow crowns for God!
It all begins with prayer, however. Like Jane Austen, let us pray faithfully for the comfort and protection of the poor and disenfranchised, and then follow the Holy Spirit’s leading for how we can help.
Let Us Pray
Blessed Lord, you are the champion of the poor and the defender of the weak. By your Holy Spirit, show us to whom you are calling us to minister in Jesus’ name. Make us sensitive to their needs and your will for how to meet them. May we always consider it a privilege to be used by you for this work. Amen.
Let Us Praise
I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness… (Isaiah 61:10)
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Captivated
…& that thy pity may be shewn upon all Captives and Prisoners.
There are no actual prisoners mentioned in Jane Austen’s novels, and most of the references to the word “captive” derive from “captivate,” which, according to the dictionary, means to attract and hold somebody’s attention by charm or other pleasing or irresistible features.
We want and expect to be helplessly attracted to the person we fall in love with, to have our hearts taken captive by their irresistible charms (and theirs with ours!). But there can be a dark side to the phenomenon as well – the danger of people losing their heads, being enticed to act against their own reason and better judgment with potentially long-lasting ramifications. Think of Mr. Bennet.
[Mr. Bennet] captivated by youth and beauty, and the appearance of good humour, which youth and beauty generally give, had married a woman whose weak understanding and illiberal mind, had very early in their marriage put an end to all real affection for her. Respect, esteem, and confidence, had vanished forever; and all his views of domestic happiness were overthrown. (Pride and Prejudice, chapter 42)
The danger and the potential for abuse only increases when that kind of power rests in the hands of a beautiful but cunning practitioner of the art.
“Elizabeth Bennet,” said Miss Bingley, when the door was closed on her, “is one of those young ladies who seek to recommend themselves to the other sex by undervaluing their own; and with many men, I dare say, it succeeds. But, in my opinion, it is a paltry device, a very mean art.” “Undoubtedly,” replied Darcy, to whom this remark was chiefly addressed, “there is a meanness in all the arts which ladies sometimes condescend to employ for captivation. Whatever bears affinity to cunning is despicable.” (Pride and Prejudice, chapter 8)
No doubt Darcy recognized Miss Bingley’s own attempts at captivation (here doing exactly what she accused Elizabeth of), since he had been her primary target, probably for years. Of course, women can just as easily fall victim to unscrupulous charmers like Willoughby and Henry Crawford.
But in this arena, there is one uncontested champion, the one who has perfected the art of captivation over the millennia. It is Satan himself, the deceiver, the father of lies, who masquerades as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). He will tempt us with things that are attractive, charming, beautiful, and nearly irresistible. Some of these things may not be evil in themselves, but if we allow anything power over us, then it becomes our master instead of God. For no one can serve two masters (Matthew 6:24).
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness… Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey – whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. (Romans 6:12-13, 16-18)
For Christians, the big question is already settled; we belong to and serve Jesus. But that doesn’t mean we are immune to temptation. If Satan can’t entice us over to his side, he will attempt to at least make us ineffective for God by compromising our integrity, distracting our attention, and dividing our loyalty.
Is there something that has so captivated you that it has compromised your work and your witness for God? For example, is a dedication to fitness or sport monopolizing your time? Is your addiction to social media or other forms of entertainment competing with your commitment to worship, Bible study, and prayer? Does food and/or drink hold too high a place in your affection? Is your devotion to your job, your volunteer work, or even your family out of proportion to your love for God?
Whatever consumes a disproportional amount of your time, energy, and imagination holds you its captive. Identify it and confess it to God. Ask his help by the Holy Spirit’s power to set you free of its rule once and for all. Refuse to be mastered by anything other than God Himself (1 Corinthians 6:12). Then pray for others who are similarly captivated, held prisoner to something or someone, including those who are actual prisoners in our correctional facilities. Pray that God would take pity on them and show them that true freedom lies in being enslaved to Christ, regardless of worldly circumstances. The spirit can be free even if the body remains behind prison bars.
Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free… I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:31-32, 34-36)
Let Us Pray
Sovereign Lord, we desire to love and serve you with our whole hearts. Show us where captivation by other things may have divided our loyalty or weakened our witness for you. Free us and all other captives from whatever sin binds us, so that we may be slaves to righteousness for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
Let Us Praise
Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God, the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them – the LORD, who remains faithful forever. He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets prisoners free, the LORD gives sight to the blind, the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down, the LORD loves the righteous. (Psalms 14
6:5-8)
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Mercy in Redemption
Above all other blessings Oh! God, for ourselves, & our fellow-creatures, we implore Thee to quicken our sense of thy Mercy in the redemption of the World…
This petition speaks of a concept that is beyond us: God’s mercy as revealed in his redemption of the world through the sacrifice of his own son Jesus Christ. Our finite minds cannot fully grasp what this actually means; the idea and scope are much too big. No wonder, then, that Jane Austen saw fit to make this a matter of prayer.
To begin with, I went to the dictionary to develop a fuller meaning of the key words. Quicken means to become faster, stimulate, come to life, or move in the womb. Mercy means compassion, kindness, or forgiveness shown, especially to somebody a person has power over. Redemption is the most complex. It is the act of saving something or somebody from a declined, dilapidated, or corrupted state, and restoring it/him/her to a better condition; deliverance from sin; the buying back of something given to a pawnbroker as security for a loan; the ending or removal of financial obligation.
So the prayer is that God would awaken in us a new understanding of the amazing compassion he showed in sending his Son to rescue the world and all who believe from the corruption of sin, paying our unpayable debt and buying us back from the verge of hell, restoring us to better condition: a right relationship with himself.
Wow! That’s huge, and clearly something no human could do. Only Jesus was capable of serving as the perfect sacrificial lamb. No surprise, then, that it was difficult to choose an illustration of a redeemer from the imperfect people who populate Jane Austen’s novels. It goes without saying that no one can measure up to Jesus; no one even comes close.
Mr. Darcy does, in a much smaller way, fill the role of redeemer in Pride and Prejudice, however. He stoops down from his superior position to buy back the Bennet family’s name, to restore them to respectability after they were all but ruined by Lydia’s disgrace with Mr. Wickham. Darcy had no obligation to do so, so why did he?
The contents of this letter threw Elizabeth into a flutter of spirits, in which it was difficult to determine whether pleasure or pain bore the greatest share. The vague and unsettled suspicions which uncertainty had produced of what Mr. Darcy might have been doing to forward her sister’s match, which she had feared to encourage, as an exertion of goodness too great to be probable, and at the same time dreaded to be just, from the pain of obligation, were proved beyond their greatest extent to be true! He… had taken on himself all the trouble and mortification attendant on such a research; in which supplication had been necessary to a woman whom he must abominate and despise, and where he was reduced to… frequently meet, reason with, persuade, and finally bribe, the man whom he always most wished to avoid, and whose very name it was punishment to him to pronounce. He had done all this for a girl whom he could neither regard nor esteem. Her heart did whisper, that he had done it for her. (Pride and Prejudice, chapter 52)
To echo today’s prayer petition, the revelations in her Aunt Gardiner’s letter quickened Elizabeth’s sense of the great mercy Mr. Darcy showed in redeeming Lydia’s reputation and the Bennets’ respectability. Furthermore, Elizabeth suspected he had done it out of love for her.
Darcy’s motivation was indeed his love for Elizabeth (along with a strong sense of justice and honor). But redeeming the Bennets didn’t come without great personal sacrifice, as the excerpt points out: money, traveling, being obliged to see Mrs. Younge and negotiating with Mr. Wickham.
And yet the final proof of Darcy’s love – the final sacrifice – was still to come. In subsequently taking Elizabeth as his wife, he at the same time took the despicable Wickham on as his “brother” forever, knowing he could then never be rid of him. It’s only with an understanding of Darcy’s character and the society he inhabited that we can appreciate the magnitude of what this cost him. No wonder Elizabeth experiences as much pain as pleasure in the knowledge. She is equally overcome by his sacrificial love and her family’s unworthiness.
Shouldn’t we feel the same and more when we consider the extent of God’s love and sacrifice for us in Jesus Christ? – rapture that God loves us so much but also an aching grief over the sin that made such a sacrifice necessary.
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:8-11)
With his precious blood, Jesus paid what he did not owe in order to redeem us from a debt we could never hope to pay ourselves. He has purchased us back from corruption and death, restoring us to wholeness and fellowship with God. May we always be mindful of and grateful for this above all other blessings.
Let Us Pray
Oh, God, although your extravagant love in the redemption of the world is beyond our comprehension, prompt us to be more aware of it on a personal level. By your Spirit, quicken within us the sense of our own deep need for a savior and of your great mercy in sending us Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.
Let Us Praise
“You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation…” (Revelation 5: 9)
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A Goodly Heritage
…we implore Thee to quicken our sense… of the Value of that Holy Religion in which we have been brought up…
Did your parents bring you up in the church from an early age? Did they pass on the knowledge of God’s Word to you and model sincere and vibrant faith, perhaps as their parents did for them beforehand? Praise God! You can say along with the Psalmist, Yea, I have a goodly heritage (Psalms 16:6, KJV). Treasure that heritage of faith. Be grateful for that early advantage.
But regardless when and how a person comes to faith, it is then their privilege to pass on that heritage, new or generations old, to others within their sphere of influence: children, grandchildren, friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc. Although no one can by their own effort create faith in the heart of another – only God by the working of his Word and the Holy Spirit can do that – you may be God’s chosen instrument to share the gospel with someone who desperately needs to hear it.
Austen’s request that God would quicken our sense of… carries over into today’s prayer petition, this time applying to valuing God’s gift of that Holy Religion in which we have been brought up. Since her father was an Anglican minister, Jane Austen may have been thinking fairly specifically here, but the principal applies to the wider Christian world as well, to the all-surpassing value of our common faith.
Are you amazed that God chose to introduce his Son to you? Are you humbled to know God considers you his child and the apple of his eye (Deut. 32:10)? It’s true of all believers. Through Christ, we have been adopted into God’s family, made heirs and partakers of the riches of the kingdom of God. We possess the hidden treasure, the pearl of great price (Matthew 13:44-46). It’s not who you know that counts but who your father is. Nothing is more important than that family connection.
We see a lot of value placed on family connections in Jane Austen’s novels, although not necessarily of a healthy sort. It often shows up more in the form of snobbery than the desire to honor ancestors and represent their name well. In Persuasion, for example, Sir Walter Elliot boasts of his family connections among the nobility of England and Ireland, and objects to his daughter associating with a mere “Mrs. Smith.” But his heir’s attitude was probably even worse. As a young man, William Walter Elliot had no interest in any kind of family heritage. According to that same Mrs. Smith:
“Depend upon it, whatever esteem Mr.
Elliot may have for his own situation in life now, as a young man he had not the smallest value for it. His chance of the Kellynch estate was something, but all the honour of the family he held as cheap as dirt. I have often heard him declare, that if baronetcies were saleable, any body should have his for fifty pounds, arms and motto, name and livery included.” (Persuasion, chapter 21)
Mr. Elliot held his own family name in contempt. He sneered at Sir Walter to his face and insulted him behind his back. Only later did he begin to see the personal advantage of reviving the family connection.
In God’s economy, of course, our family history and connections don’t mean a thing. Race, profession, and financial condition count for nothing. Our status doesn’t depend on the distinguished names in our family tree. The lack of them doesn’t mean we are any less precious to God. The only connection that does matter is belonging to Jesus.
You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. (Galatians 3:26-28)
Mr. Elliot dreamt of great wealth and, belatedly, thought inheriting a title and the Kellynch estate might be worthwhile after all. The children of God can look forward to something far superior. We can look forward to the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints (Ephesians 1:18). We can’t take credit for any of this (no more so than Sir Walter could rightly take personal credit for the accident of his relatively high birth). We have done nothing to earn or deserve special favor. It is purely by the grace of God.
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