For the last few weeks I’ve been reading through a collection of quotes from diaries written by Lilias Trotter. You can read a couple, here and here. Since she’s been on my mind, I want to share a short review of that book today.

My first introduction to Lilias Trotter came when I read Faithful Women and Their Extraordinary God by Noel Piper. I remember thinking at the time how wonderful it would be to actually see some of Trotter’s art and read her writings. Sadly, her books are out of print and her paintings and sketchbooks are hidden away in the Print Room of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England. Miriam Huffman Rockness, however, set out on the long, arduous journey of finding Trotter’s journals, diaries, out-of-print books, and art. It was Rockness’ biography of Lilias Trotter, A Passion for the Impossible: The Life of Lilias Trotter, that Noel Piper used as a source for her book. Rockness has given us another gift in A Blossom in the Desert: Reflections of Faith in the Art and Writings of Lilias Trotter, a collection of Trotter’s quotes, paintings and sketches.

A Blossom in the Desert begins with a testimony from Rockness of how she first came to know, admire, and seek out the work of Lilias Trotter to fulfill her vision of seeing Trotter in print again. It is a story of God’s providence. After reading this collection, I am convinced God is pleased with the unearthing of Trotter’s work and will be glorified if more of His people follow her exemplary life. Trotter’s mentor promised that “she would be the greatest living painter and do things that would be Immortal.” In Trotter’s mind, “to be Immortal” would mean she would have to “give herself up to art.” She wrote, “I see clear as daylight now, I cannot give myself to painting in the way he means and continue to ‘seek first the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness.’” She forsook all the fame and riches of this world, the approval of her friends and family, to follow Christ in ministering to young Muslim girls and women in northern Africa.

It was her habit to spend the early hours of every morning in a quiet spot outside, communing with God through His Word and His Creation. While the quotes shared in this book demonstrate Trotter’s spiritual depth and ability to synthesize God’s word and creation to teach truth, her sketches and paintings demonstrate her eye for the unspeakable beauty of God’s creation. “Stamped on every page of her diaries and journals is a woman fully immersed in the practical realities of everyday living, even as she is totally engaged in assimilating these realities through an eternal perspective. It is from the tensions of these two realities, the seen and the unseen, that hard spiritual truths are hammered out.” Alongside a meditation of Jesus as the Living Water you will find a delicate watercolor of an African water well, bubbling up from the ground. I like to think that daisies portrayed in the book were the very ones that “spoke” to Trotter of “the need of deliberately holding back everything that would crowd our souls and stifle the freedom of God’s light and air.” Rockness organizes the sketches, paintings and quotes around three themes: The Light of Jesus, The Life of Jesus, and The Love of Jesus, three things Trotter lived for others to come and see.

A Blossom in the Desert is a beautiful collection, one that I will treasure. Though it isn’t designed to be a devotional per se, I’ve used it in that way for the past few weeks. It would also make an ideal gift.