The School of Suffering

THE SCHOOL OF SUFFERING

"Are we learning love in the school of suffering?

Are our hearts being mellowed and deepened by the summer heat of trial until the fruit of the Spirit-love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance-is ripening for the harvest of His coming, and our sufferings are easily borne for His sake?

This is the school of love, and the lessons make Him unutterably more dear to our hearts and us to His. In this way only can we learn with Him the heavenly charity which suffers long, and is kind. We see that the very first and the very last features of the face of love, as delineated in Paul's portrait of it (1 Corinthians 13), are marks of pain and patient suffering-suffers long, endureth all things.

So let us learn in the school of love to suffer, to be kind and to endure all things. Surely it will not be hard to love through every circumstance when it is the heart of Jesus within us that will love and continue to love to the very end.

I want the love that suffers and is kind, That envies not nor vaunts its pride of fame. Is not puffed up, does not discourteous act, Is not provoked, nor seeks its own to claim. "--A.B. Simpson

Alexander Solzhenitsyn - Dec 11, 1918 - August 3, 2008

When I read of the death of one of my favorite authors, memories rushed my mind and heart remembering his book which I read 46 years ago....

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

was a book that changed my thinking and enlarged my world view in a profound way. Though quite trivial in most of my pursuits at age 19, I did love to read and One Day In the Life was the Book of the Month Club's offering. An unassuming little book physically, it was to become a classic, earning the author a Nobel Peace Prize in Literature in 1970.

Both this work and Gulag Archipelago were sobering, eye-opening, sad, depressing, truthful and shameful. I learned of the suffering inside Communist prison camps via this brilliant author who knew first-hand of such a horrific experience. While he said we cannot really understand that which we have not endured, I do believe his words imprinted strongly on my heart and helped open my eyes to conditions in the world so different than my own.

In one of his poems he writes:"Bless you, prison, for having been in my life." "God of the Universe! I believe again! Though I renounced You, You were with me!"

Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus - I Thessalonians 5:18