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| St. Mark Presbyterian Church |
illness attacked all parts of my body. I was weak and felt very sick. It attacked my eyes, ears, nose and lungs. I had trouble standing and walking. I could no longer use my hands to write. In fact, for one of my surgeries I had to mark an “X,” because I could not write my name. My fingers on one hand turned almost black.
Nighttime was the worst for the pain, but nighttime turned out to be the best for me. One night I heard a voice, the voice of an angel. The angel said, “You are going to be okay. It’s going to take time, but you will get back to normal.” Although it sounds crazy, I knew that voice was not in my head.
Weeks later, again in the quiet of the night, I heard the voice of God say to me, “I sent you an angel because I knew you needed it at that time.”
During my illness, it did not matter to me what the doctors said. I KNEW I was going to get back to normal. It was just going to take time. God had told me that.
When I look back at those years in my life, I don’t regret it. Those were the times that God comforted me.
Psalm 23 4, 6: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. … Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.”
K. Emge
"All our sufferings are transformable into his work, our passion into his action. That is why he instituted prayer, says Pascal: to bestow on creatures the dignity of causality. We are really his body; the Church is Christ as my body is me. That is why Paul says his sufferings are making up in his own body what Christ has yet to endure in his body (Col 1:24).
ReplyDeleteThus God's answer to the problem of suffering not only really happened 2,000 years ago, but it is still happening in our own lives. The solution to our suffering is our suffering! All our suffering can become part of his work, the greatest work ever done, the work of salvation, of helping to win for those we love eternal joy.
How? This can be done on one condition: that we believe. For faith is not just a mental choice within us; it is a transaction with him. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone... opens the door, I will come in and eat with him" (Rev 3:20). To believe, according to John's Gospel, is to receive (Jn 1:12), to receive what God has already done. His part is finished ("It is finished," he said on the cross). Our part is to receive that work and let it work itself out in and through our lives, including our tears. We offer it up to him, and he really takes it and uses it in ways so powerful that we would be flattened with wonder if we knew them now. " -- Peter Kreeft, "God's Answer to Suffering"