The game begins with the two combatants facing each other, holding hands, their fingers interlocked. When the word is given, they start twisting and writhing like contortionists, each trying to gain leverage over the other until their fingers are so agonised that one is forced to concede, “Mercy!” The winner graciously releases his grip, and the round is complete. In primary school, we called the game ‘Mercy’—but our grasp on the concept was as tortuous as the game itself. (more…)
Category Archives: Suffering
Suffering and decision-making
Everyday Ministry, Pastoral Ministry, Sola Panel
Is it better to choose a more difficult ministry, or an easy one? Is it more godly to choose suffering over comfort when we make decisions about life and ministry? After all, suffering makes us more like Jesus, and surely that’s good for us, isn’t it? (more…)
Give up your life: When you’re sick
Life
This is my third year of suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)1 and I often pray that it will be my last. It has turned me from a confident, extraverted, active, independent person, who hardly ever said ‘no’, into someone trapped in a frail, exhausted, pain-filled body desperately desiring to be able to get out of bed. In a few days, I went from being a young, enthusiastic and highly-driven ministry trainee to being someone stripped of their ability to work, study, go for a run or travel very much; to someone often limited to their bed or couch, missing church, parties, or hanging out with dear friends. It has changed my life so dramatically that it has shaken me to the very core of who I am. (more…)
Does God feel our pain?
Thought
Does God feel your pain? For many of us the question is a bit odd, like asking ‘Is God good?’ or ‘Does God love?’ We turn to John 11 and its description of Jesus being moved at Mary’s weeping, and his own weeping at the site of Lazarus’ grave. It is common to use this as proof that God is affected by our suffering, mourning, and death: that he shares it and does not stand aloof from it. “Don’t blame God,” we implicitly say, “He’s going through the same pain and suffering you experience. He cares.” (more…)
The dangers of oversharing
Life
How to avoid persecution (according to Screwtape)
Life
Our subject today, my novice fiends, is ‘How to help the Enemy’s urchins avoid persecution and suffering’. Now, hush your maggoty howls and listen to your Uncle Screwtape! Our Father didn’t promote me to Professor of Persecution for nothing, so listen and learn. (more…)
Sacrifice: Have we given up?
Life
For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. (Mark 8:35).
Do we need a bit more suffering?
Life
Here in Mexico, many middle-class people spend a significant amount of time and money reducing suffering and the potential for suffering. I suspect Mexicans are not alone in their engagement of this pursuit. (I’m using ‘suffering’ in a very broad sense here—anything from ‘annoyance’ to ‘effort’ to ‘persecution’.) For example, here in Mexico, you can perform many tasks in ‘drive-thru’ mode to reduce the ‘suffering’ of having to get out of your car and walk. Buying lunch, going to the ATM, buying the paper, buying new windscreen wipers (!) and taking your kids to school are all activities it is possible to undertake in a suffering-free manner.
Should theodicy be at the heart of our preaching?
Up front
Theodicy is the defence of God’s justice and goodness. It is something we naturally think about, and more often than not, it drives our preaching. You reach a difficult teaching of Jesus about hell, or a confronting passage of Paul’s about the role of men and women in the church, or even a verse about the uniqueness of Christ, and instead of listening to the passage, you start arguing with it. And sometimes God’s word seems to magically come around to your point of view. (more…)
Delightful breezes from the Psalms
Life
Reading the Psalms is always a great delight. It is easy to notice when it is one of those delightful kind of Psalms. But some others, of course, take you through the valley of the shadow before the delight arrives. It certainly does come, but only as if through the darkness. I am glad not many are as black as Psalm 88; man, it must take you low, if its high point reads, “You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness.” (Ps 88:18). But even these dark chapters from the Psalmist’s life can resonate with the ones the author of life is writing in your life story. In some (possibly sick) way, this can provide you some encouragement and help (although I never really understand how this works; you say to a friend, “I am feeling pretty low”, and they say, “Me too”, and you both feel better???)
The goodness of God
Thought
What is goodness? What does it mean that God is good? Do we really believe in a good God, and if we do, how can we even begin to talk to other people about him? Paul Grimmond investigates. (more…)
History of the ordinary
Life
History ‘from below’ gets down and dirty. It is a pity it hurts so much to do it.
The ‘Great Ones’ of human history often earn the acclaim they so enjoy to propagate—at the expense of many ordinary people. These ordinary people either made them what they became (without thanks), or were crushed by them in the process of their exaltation (without mercy). Either way, there are valleys of dried bones beneath the feet of those who call themselves benefactors.
Spiritual Depression
Review, Sola Panel
Spiritual Depression: Its causes and its cure
D Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1965, 300pp.
Available from Moore Books
02 9577 9966 (more…)
No hope without character
Life
I was in church on Sunday morning, listening to a sermon on Romans 5. In spite of having read it hundreds of times in my life, I was struck by my lack of understanding. Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character and character produces hope (Rom 5:3-4). Why have I never thought about how those things fit into the context of Paul’s argument in this chapter?
Why we don’t sing
Life, Sola Panel
Sandy, I am delighted of course that you are with me on so many things. And I hope you will also be pleased to know that I am with you completely on the goodness and value of singing. (In fact, the only thing I wouldn’t be with you on is the need for that ‘but’ at the beginning of your second paragraph. But let’s not quibble.)
As for why we don’t sing more or better, and in particular why your men aren’t singing, I think the Bible also points us to the answer.