HOPING
BACK TO HEALTH

Topics: Attitudes; Despair; Discouragement; Faith; Hope; Overcoming; Pain; Strength; Trials; Victory; Waiting on God

References: Isaiah 40:28–31; Romans 12:12; Hebrews 11:1

Ernest Gordon, dean of the chapel of Princeton University for twenty-six years, was called to the ministry in a Japanese concentration camp during World War II. Gordon and his fellow prisoners were used as slave labor to build the Thailand-Burma Railroad. Hundreds of them perished from mistreatment. As an officer, Gordon struggled to help his men make sense of the suffering they had to endure. He became deathly ill, however, and was spared only by the care of Chaplain Dusty Miller, who shared his precious rations with Gordon.

At one point, as Chaplain Miller nursed Gordon’s broken body back to health, he spoke the words that nursed Gordon’s broken soul back to health and called him to ministry. Miller told him, “A man can experience an incredible amount of pain and suffering if he has hope. When he loses his hope, that’s when he dies.”

—Bill White, Paramount, California