Posts Tagged ‘suffering’

Since Christmas, I have been reviewing nine books on the theme of Christian suffering. The rise of the modern health, wealth and prosperity heresy has robbed many Christians of their ability to deal with suffering because they are not adequately prepared and armed with Scripture to meet it.  I personally have gained a lot from this study.

200 years ago, one of my greatest heroes was born. David Livingstone, born 19th March 1813 in Blantyre, Lanarkshire became the greatest of African missionaries, determined to open up the Dark Continent “for Commerce and Christianity”.

One verse has been often in my mind over the past weeks.  “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart” (Ecclesiastes 7:4)

I’m sitting in bed, off sick from work with a cough and cold on my chest (no need for sympathy – I wrote this a couple of months back now). And it’s making me think about illness. Some of us have a continuous struggle with illness every day of our lives. Most of us are ill at some time or another, although you occasionally meet hardy specimens who haven’t missed a day’s work in 20 years.

Yet, even for those folk, the day may well come when they are struck down …

These are to signify that I Obadiah Holmes of Newport, Rhode Island being at present through the goodness and mercy of my God of sound memory and being by daily intimation put in mind of the frailty and uncertainty of this present life, do therefore for settling my estate in this world which it hath pleased the Lord to bestow upon me, make and ordain this my last will and testament in manner following, committing my spirit unto …