HEROES FIND A REASON TO REJOICE IN SPITE OF THEIR PAIN

Ron Bainbridge

Today’s Message of Encouragement from Discovering A BETTER LIFE MINISTRIES

https://abl-alb.wixsite.com/discoverabetterlife/about

(Stories of Real People, Real Events, Real Places)

And are Dedicated to providing Spiritual FOOD FOR THOUGHT

To HELP Men and Women Find HOPE

THROUGH SHARING GOD’S GRACE and LOVE!

(Ron Bainbridge, Editor) (January 28th , 2020)

HEROES FIND A REASON TO REJOICE

IN SPITE OF THEIR PAIN

Friend, it comes to my mind that the real heroes in this life are people who refuse to be victims, and no matter what their circumstances may be, find a reason to rejoice in the middle of their pain. They aren’t fools---they don’t deny the pain in their life; they just won’t let it be their lord and master. Such people refuse to gaze endlessly at their troubles until excessive self-pity takes over and ruins them completely.

Perhaps you may remember poor Miss Haversham in the book and film “Great Expectations”?

You may recall that she was jilted on her wedding day and lived the rest of her life in her wedding dress in the very room where she was when she received the news that her fiancé had deserted her. The clocks in her house were all stopped at that very hour and remained precisely as they were when the awful news came. Miss Haversham’s life ended that day, years before her death finally came in the fire that destroyed her house.

Then there’s the heroine’s father in “A Tale of Two Cities”, who after spending years in the dreaded Bastille Prison, was brought to England and freedom. But late in the night they would often hear him do what he had been forced to do for years in the darkness of his cell: Which was to mend shoes and mumble his prison number when someone spoke to him. The reality is, he had never been freed---they only moved his body from France to England.

Friend, it’s true that pain can crush and brutalize--it isn’t always strengthening or character building. However, the kind of pain that most of us face---real, sharp, and sometimes prolonged as it is---can be overcome.

In real life, people like Victor Frankl, who suffered terrible “medical experiments” under the Nazis in their evil camps, have taught us that it isn’t what happens to us that ultimately matters, but what we do with what happens to us. Well, could we say that is a glib response on the part of Victor Frankl? - Hardly! You see, it’s amazing how often one comes across suffering of the horrendous kind only to discover that the sufferer is ablaze with cheerful stubbornness!

I’m sure you’ve seen the news coverage yourself---a refugee camp overrun with sickness and hunger, with death in every other hut. And then you see some smiling man or woman, although rubbing shoulders with weeping, despairing, beaten people, looking at all those challenges right in the eye, but who remains unbowed and lives in spite of them.

Friend, you and I need such brave spirits to change this broken world we live in . . . or at least to change communities or individuals, if not the world. We need people who are realists---who acknowledge pain, their own included---but people who refuse to be intimidated into paralysis. Because out of these pained masses of people come the suffering, intelligent, realistic souls who won’t grovel. In fact, all around the world, we discover people who choose to live and die in these conditions so they can ease the burdens of other sufferers.

Perhaps you have read the book titled Children’s Prayers. In it, one of the children surveyed the challenges and risks that a life of faith in God can bring, then wrote God a note that said, “Dear God, count me in, your friend, Herbie.”

Friend, thank you for taking the time to read what I feel privileged to have shared with you today.

Perhaps you are looking to find a place where trouble can’t hurt you. If so, we’d like to send you a small booklet that will help you to find such a place. The booklet is titled “WHERE TROUBLE CAN’T HURT YOU” and it won’t cost you anything.

To receive your personal copy by return mail, simply write to Discovering A BETTER LIFE, P.O. Box 1540, Albany, Western Australia 6331.

If you prefer, you can request your copy by Phone on: 98 418 418

Or Email us at: abl- alb@omninet.net.au