The salvation of the righteous is from the LORD;
he is their refuge in
the time of trouble. Psalm 37:39.

As servants of God we have commended ourselves in
every way: through
great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities.
2 Corinthians
6:4. And not only that, but we also boast in our
sufferings, knowing
that suffering produces endurance. Romans 5:3. [He]
consoles us in all
our affliction, so that we may be able to console
those who are in any
affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves
are consoled by
God. 2 Corinthians 1:4. We are afflicted in every
way, but not
crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair. 2
Corinthians 4:8. For
this slight momentary affliction is preparing us
for an eternal weight
of glory beyond all measure. 2 Corinthians 4:17.
I am overjoyed in all
our affliction. 2 Corinthians 7:4. For this reason,
brothers and
sisters, during all our distress and persecution
we have been
encouraged about you through your faith. 1 Thessalonians
3:7.

In your distress… in time to come, you will return
to the LORD your
God and heed him. Deuteronomy 4:30. Trust in him
at all times, O
people; pour out your heart before him. God is a
refuge for us. Psalm
62:8.

But [Lord] you do see! Indeed you note trouble and
grief, that you may
take it into your hands; the helpless commit themselves
to you; you
have been the helper of the orphan. Psalm 10:14.
Be gracious to me, O
LORD, for I am in distress. Psalm 31:9. Answer me
when I call, O God
of my right! You gave me room when I was in distress.
Be gracious to
me, and hear my prayer. Psalm 4:1. Relieve the troubles
of my heart,
and bring me out of my distress. Psalm 25:17.

The LORD is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold
in times of
trouble. Psalm 9:9. For he will hide me in his shelter
in the day of
trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his
tent; he will set me
high on a rock. Psalm 27:5.

When you pass through the water, I will be with you;
and through the
rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk
through fire you
shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume
you. Isaiah 43:2.
Do not fear, for I am with you. Isaiah 43:5.

In my distress I called upon the LORD; to my God
I cried for help.
From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to
him reached his ears.
Psalm 18:6. When the righteous cry for help, the
LORD hears, and
rescues them from all their troubles. Psalm 34:17.

Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain
you; he will never
permit the righteous to be moved. Psalm 55:22.

…..

It’s summer in Australia, a time for beach-holidays
and reading. I’m

enjoying Charles Williams’ ‘Bradman: An Australian
Hero’ (Little Brown

and Co., 1996). Bradman is #1 on any list of outstanding
Australian

sportspersons. He may have been further in front
of his colleagues than

any other athlete, ever. By general consent he was
the sole difference

between Australia and England whenever he played.
(One English captain

reckoned he was worth three batsmen). A sportswriter
put it this way:

‘He has upset the balance of the game as it has never
been upset before

by the genius of a single player’. Who knows what
further unbreakable

records he might have set if the war had not intervened
when he was at

his prime (when he did not pick up a cricket bat
for five years).

But life wasn’t easy for this little Aussie battler.
He suffered the

jealousy of lesser mortals (some of them laughed
with glee when he was

dismissed and couldn’t raise his first-class batting
average to 100).

Don and Jessie lost their first baby, nearly lost
their second to a

fatal illness; their third baby was spastic. He suffered
on and off

from severe depression, an eye complaint (!) and
back pains. He was

invalided out of the army because of his physical
problems! He was

always sea/air-sick. A bit of a loner, he was criticized
by his

team-mates for not being a beer-drinking socialiser.
A shy man, early

in his career he hated making speeches. Revered around
the world as a

sort of demi-god, he didn’t want greatness: he only
wanted to play

cricket; he didn’t want crowds and adulation: he
wanted to be left

alone.

What kept him going? An iron-willed determination,
yes. But at a time

in England when he was desperately ill, he received
a cable from

Jessie: ‘Go to it, Don: I believe in you.’ After
he batted in the next

match against Yorkshire, The Times wrote it up as
‘one of the greatest

exhibitions of his career’.

As with any high-profile person, he was often accused
unfairly of this

and that, but, as Williams put it, ‘Bradman knew
as well as anybody

[that] fairness is not necessarily part of life’…

***

The Roman proconsul ordered: ‘Take the oath, and
I shall release you.

Curse Christ.’

Polycarp said: ‘Eighty-six years I have served him,
and he never did me

any wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved
me?’

And when he had said these things and many besides
he was inspired with

courage and joy, and his face was full of grace,
so that the proconsul

was astonished…

And with his hands put behind him and tied, he looked
up to heaven and

said:

‘Lord God Almighty, Father of the beloved and blessed
Servant Jesus

Christ,.. I bless you, because you have deemed me
worthy of this day

and hour, to take part in the number of martyrs…
for resurrection to

eternal life… May I be received as a rich and acceptable
sacrifice

For this and everything I praise you, I bless you,
I glorify you,

through Jesus Christ, your beloved Servant, through
whom be glory to

you with him and the Holy Spirit both now and unto
the ages to come.

Amen.’

And when he had concluded the Amen and finished his
prayer, the men lit

the fire…

***

How does someone facing a painful death get to have
this sort of faith?

First, here’s a truism so obvious that it is likely
to be ignored or

even denied: all of life is trouble. We in the West
have been seduced

into believing that, properly organised, we can buy
our way out of

trouble. The advertisers promise a trouble-free existence
if we

purchase their product. The insurers promise to cover
any contingency,

for a fee. We have government social welfare benefits
on a scale

unheard of in most of the world for most of history.
Which is why, of

course, that the suicide rate is climbing in affluent
countries. We

have been ‘sold a dummy’, and life is too catastrophic
to endure when

trouble comes.

On a visit to the U.S., the well-known German preacher
Helmut Thielicke

was asked the most important question facing Americans.
He said

Americans did not know how to deal with suffering.
He thought they did

not expect trouble to be part of life. ‘Again and
again, I have the

feeling that suffering is regarded as something which
is fundamentally

inadmissable, disturbing, embarrassing and not to
be endured.’

We are taught by our sick culture to indulge continually
in what Albert

Camus called ‘nostalgia for other people’s lives.’

One of the few generalisations you can make about
the greatest men and

women of the Bible is that they all got into trouble.
God must love his

special people a lot to trust them with problems!
An interesting text

in the Psalms says, ‘Before I was afflicted I went
astray, but now I

keep your word’ (119:67). Jesus promised his followers
three things –

constant trouble, and constant joy (because of his
constant presence).

The early Christian missionaries had this important
piece of

encouragement (!) for young converts: ‘It is through
many persecutions

that we must enter the kingdom of God’ (Acts 14:22).

The Greek word ‘thlipsis’, affliction, is used fifty-five
times in

the New Testament, referring to persecution, oppression,
famine,

judgment, or even the labour pains of childbirth.
The early Christian

leaders said trouble was not merely to be endured,
but even welcomed!

Thus St. Augustine thanks God, in the Confessions,
for ‘mercifully

sprinkling my path with thorns’.

Malcolm Muggeridge saw life as ‘a very bright light
and a very deep

darkness, an inconceivable hope and blackest despair,
an overwhelming

love and abysmal desolation.’ There are some things
we come up against

which we have to adjust to, because they will not
adjust to us. Our

handicap or problem can become the foundation for
strength – and even

happiness. What you do to life is much more important
than what life

does to you. The way out is always the way through,
not around or

away. The good news really does come by facing the
bad news. It is

possible ‘to fail forward,’ and sad indeed is the
person who does not

know this and thus allows the experiences of life
to be wasted on him

or her.

A young lady was just eighteen when she contracted
a dreadful illness.

To save her life, the doctor said he must amputate
her feet. This he

did, but the disease spread further, so he took off
her legs to the

knees. Later he amputated her thighs. Then it broke
out again in her

hands and arms: first one arm, then the other were
taken off, right up

to the shoulders. She was left with only her trunk.
For fifteen years

she lay there. The walls of her room were covered
with Bible texts, all

of them affirming God’s gifts of love and peace and
power. That woman

mediated such grace from her room that hundreds of
people were

converted to faith in Christ through her letters.

How did she write? A carpenter friend fitted an instrument
to her

shoulder into which a pen could be inserted. We write
with fingers,

hand and arm: she had to use her whole body, but
her writing became as

beautiful as copperplate. She eventually collected
fifteen hundred

letters telling of people blessed by her. When asked
how she did it she

smiled and replied: ‘Well, you know, Jesus said that
those who

believed in him, from within them would flow rivers
of living water. I

believed in him – that’s all!’

Mozart died in abject poverty; Beethoven – of all
people – started to

go deaf at 28; Stevenson was writing novels while
dying of consumption;

Handel wrote The Messiah when he was broke; George
Matheson, the

Scottish preacher who wrote the great hymn ‘O Love
That Will Not Let Me

Go’ was blind; Lord Byron had a club foot; the philosopher
Kant had an

incurable disease; Wilberforce took opium for twenty
years to deaden

his pain; Helen Keller was blind and deaf…

So our prayer is not for easier lives, but to be
stronger in faith, and

hope and love. Remember trouble comes to those who
don’t deserve it –

but so does love!

St. Theresa had problems, and once complained: ‘Lord,
if this is the

way you treat your friends, it’s no wonder you have
so few of them.’

But why is there a ‘St.’ before her name? Because
through her trouble

she came to believe that ‘everything is grace’. ‘In
his will, our

peace’ – T.S.Eliot calls this statement, from Dante,
the profoundest

line in all of human writing.

Well…?

…..

Life is difficult.

This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.
It is a great truth

because once we truly see this truth, we transcend
it. Once we truly

know that life is difficult – once we truly understand
and accept it –

then life is no longer difficult. Because once it
is accepted, the fact

that life is difficult no longer matters.

Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult.
Instead they

moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly,
about the enormity of

their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties
as if life were

generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice
their belief,

noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent
a unique kind of

affliction that should not be and that has somehow
been especially

visited upon them, or else upon their families, their
tribe, their

class, their nation, their race or even their species,
and not upon

others…

What makes life difficult is that the process of
confronting and

solving problems is a painful one… Since life poses
an endless series

of problems, life is always difficult and is full
of pain as well as

joy.

Yet it is in this whole process of meeting and solving
problems that

life has its meaning… Problems call forth our courage
and our wisdom;

indeed they create our courage and our wisdom. It
is only because of

problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. When
we desire to

encourage the growth of the human spirit, we challenge
and encourage

the human capacity to solve problems, just as in
school we deliberately

set problems for our children to solve. It is through
the pain of

confronting and resolving problems that we learn.
As Benjamin Franklin

said, ‘Those things that hurt, instruct.’ It is for
this reason that

wise people learn not to dread but actually to welcome
problems

and actually to welcome the pain of problems.

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled, New York:
Simon & Schuster,

1978, pp. 15, 16.

There is no misfortune from which some good may not
be derived.

Spanish Proverb

I came across something that would be with me throughout
my life.

Oppositions break or solidify a person. I determined
they would

solidify me. I wouldn’t bear things; I would use
them. As a radiant

woman said, ‘My cheeks have been slapped so much
they are quite rosy.’

E. Stanley Jones, A Song of Ascents: A Spiritual
Biography, Nashville:

Abingdon Press, 1968, p. 48.

Hello trouble, (you –)


I’ve met with you before –


So now you’re here again,


Bigger than ever, larger than life,


Ready to cause more and more strife


And break me if you can.


My hands are tied behind my back


My legs they are in chains,


My health is not what it used to be


I do have aches and pains,


My responsibilities loom large


And there are those who on me depend


Whom I wouldn’t see hurt for the world –


So buzz off trouble. But if you’re going to stay:


My brow you may crease, my shoulders you may bow,


My mind you may scar, my nerves you may break,


Mark you I said MAY;


But mark also if you stay


I shall surely grow and grow,


And my spirit, my soul, you cannot touch,


For they belong to God and me –


And no matter what you do or say


They always will be free.

Ken Walsh, Sometimes I Weep, London: SCM Press Ltd,
1973, p. 112

When I read of the barbarous ages of slaughter and
carnage and

brutality through which my long line of ancestors
threaded its fearsome

way, it is perfectly astounding to me that not one
of them got stabbed

or clubbed or shot until they had duly taken their
places in that long

genealogical list. When I think of the wars and famines
and pestilences

through which those forebears of mine came unscathed,
I catch my

breath.

F W Boreham, The Tide Comes In, London: Epworth Press,
1958, p.15.

I repeat then: the secret of responding heroically
to trouble is not

something highly complicated; it lies in one’s view
of the relation of

God to each and every event. If we separate the two,
and see God off

somewhere else as impotent and indifferent, this
means we are left

alone with our troubles and are thus inadequate and
ultimately

defeated. But if we take the biblical stance toward
life, and see him

everywhere, in each event, either intentionally or
permissively but

always creatively, then we can take heart and be
assured that our

trouble is not totally bad or beyond the possibility
of working good.

Our challenge then, in trouble, is to remember Who
is also there and

what this means, and to work at the job of increasing
that awareness

until it is perennial.

John R Claypool, Learning to Use our Troubles, An
unpublished sermon,

January 21, 1979

The saints look at their lives, half full of joys
and half full of

sorrows as anyone’s life is, and they see it as half
full, while others

see it as half empty. The saints are grateful for
the full half. They

‘count their blessings’. They know that their very
existence is sheer

gift, and so they know that great and joyful virtue
of gratitude, so

tragically neglected in our day. No one can understand
life without

being grateful for it. No one can wholly misunderstand
life if they are

grateful for it.

Peter Kreeft, ‘Seven Lessons from the Saints About
Suffering’, in

John Wimber, (ed.), Equipping the Saints, Vol. 2
No. 1, Winter 1988, p.

6.

…..

Lord,

we cannot always see

beyond

our pain and sorrow to the triumph of faith!

We think

we have cause to complain

when things go badly for us:

when friends let us down,

when neighbours hurt our feelings,

when sickness and death

deprive us of happiness.

Help us to see clearly,

how much greater

is our cause for joy

and hope

through the love

you pour into our hearts;

help us to see that all these things

that hurt us

are the trials through which we triumph

through the power of him who loved us;

so that in good times and bad

our lives may honour you,

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Alan Gaunt, New Prayers for Worship, Leeds: John
Paul the Preacher’s

Press, 1978, p. 5

God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, though your
people walk in the

valley of darkness, no evil should they fear, for
they follow in faith

the call of the shepherd whom you have sent for their
hope and

strength.

Attune our minds to the sound of his voice, lead
our steps in the path

he has shown, that we may know the strength of his
outstretched arm and

enjoy the light of your presence for ever.

Daily Mass Book, Lent 1991-1992, Brisbane, The Liturgical
Commission,

p.170

God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we
cannot change, the

courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom
to know the

difference.

In everything we do, in our troubles, difficulties
and hardships we

show we are God’s servants. By purity, patience and
kindness, by the

Spirit and by our love, and by our message of truth,
we show ourselves

for what we are. We may seem poor, but we make many
rich; we seem to

have nothing, but we possess all that there is to
have…

If Christ’s name is flung in our teeth we should
count ourselves happy,

because that glorious spirit, the Spirit of God,
is resting upon us.

If we suffer, let it not be for murder, theft or
sorcery, nor for

infringing on the rights of others; but if we suffer
as Christians we

should feel no disgrace, but confess that name to
the honour of God.

It gives us a share in Christ’s sufferings. That
is cause for joy!

Giver of the present, hope for the future: save us
from the time of

trial. When prophets warn us of doom, of catastrophe
and of suffering

beyond belief, then, God, free us from our helplessness,
and deliver us

from evil. Save us from our arrogance and folly,
for you are God who

created the world; you have redeemed us and you are
our salvation.

Almighty God, you see that we have no power of ourselves
to help

ourselves; keep us both outwardly in our bodies and
inwardly in our

souls, that we may be defended from all adversities
which may happen to

the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault
and hurt the

soul.

God of opportunity and change, praise to you for
giving us life at this

critical time. As our horizons extend, keep us loyal
to our past; as

our dangers increase, help us to prepare the future;
keep us trusting

and hopeful, ready to recognise your kingdom as it
comes. Amen.

A New Zealand Prayer Book, Auckland, Collins, 1989,
pp. 116, 119,

133-135.

Allow the strength of God to sustain you,

The wisdom of God to instruct you,

The hand of God to protect you,

The shield of God to defend you,

The Spirit of God to lead you,

The Son of God to redeem you,

Until by the grace of God,

We see him face to face. Amen.

E. Lee Phillips, Prayers for Worship, Texas: Word
Books, 1979, p. 136

…..

A Benediction.

Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere
in prayer. Romans

12:12. Blessed is anyone who endures temptation.
Such a one has stood

the test and will receive the crown of life that
the Lord has promised

to those who love him. And after you have suffered
for a little while,

the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal
glory in

Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen,
and establish you.

James 1:12; 1 Peter 5:10. The LORD answer you in
the day of trouble!

The name of the God of Jacob protect you! Psalm 20:1.