Suffering
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Love in the Midst of the Black Death
Imagine yourself a six-year old child in 1349 when the infamous Black Death strikes. In less than a year about one half of the 30,000 citizens in your town have perished at the hand of the bubonic plague. It passes but breaks out again–six more times during your lifetime. With each outbreak, images of your… Continue reading
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How a Stroke Saved an Ornery Old Farmer
So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For our slight, momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen, for what… Continue reading
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Sweet after Bitter, a Personal Story
Our daughter, Sara, married a wonderful man. As it was a second marriage for both her and Mark, you know there were past difficult circumstances. Here is Mark’s description, in his own words, of the violent storm he was forced to weather: In 2020 my world was turned upside down with the news that my… Continue reading
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A Nagging Question that Prevents Us from Fully Giving Our Hearts to God
Even those of us who have firmly decided to follow Jesus often don’t trust him unconditionally because of one big problem–pain and suffering. We can only trust someone to the extent we believe they are good and therefore have our best interests at heart. We will hold back from fully giving our hearts to God… Continue reading
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If God is Love, Why Can Pain be So Excruciating and So Terrifying?
In my last post, we considered “the problem of pain” as it’s sometimes called. “How can there be so much suffering, evil and pain in a world created and ruled by a loving God?” We saw love must be freely given, that is, we must have free will to choose to love or not. And… Continue reading
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Why is There so Much Suffering if God is in Absolute Control, or is He?
“While everybody was asleep an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat.” Recently, in the middle of the night, Lee Strobel’s interview of Charles Templeton came to mind. Templeton was a Canadian journalist in the 60’s and 70’s, well known for his atheism. He had been a preacher, at one time the pulpit partner… Continue reading
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Jesus in the Dark
A number of years ago a friend asked me to visit a woman dying of cancer in the hospital. Her sickness had begun as breast cancer, and now an ugly, tell-tale purple blotch crept from the top of her night gown to her shoulder. Chemotherapy had robbed her of all her hair. As I approached… Continue reading