More Love to Thee, O Christ<\/b><\/p>\n
Elizabeth Prentiss, the wife of a Presbyterian minister, spent most of her adult life as an invalid, seldom knowing a day without constant pain throughout her body. Yet she was described by her friends as a bright-eyed, cheery woman with a keen sense of humor.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth was always strong in faith and encouraging to others, until tragedy struck the Prentiss family beyond what even she could bear. The loss of two of their children brought great sorrow to Elizabeth\u2019s life. For weeks no one could console her. In her diary she wrote of \u201cempty hands, a worn-out, exhausted body, and unutterable longings to flee from a world that has so many sharp experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n
During this period of grief, Elizabeth cried out to God, asking Him to minister to her broken spirit. It was at this time that Elizabeth\u2019s story became a living testimony! For over 100 years the Body of Christ has been encouraged as they sing the words penned by Elizabeth Prentiss in her deepest sorrow:<\/p>\n
More love to Thee, O Christ, more love to Thee! Hear Thou the prayer I make on bended knee; This is my earnest plea: More love, O Christ, to Thee\u2026<\/p>\n
Once earthly joy I craved, sought peace and rest; Now Thee alone I seek\u2014Give what is best; This all my prayer shall be: More love, O Christ, to Thee\u2026<\/p>\n
Let sorrow do its work, send grief and pain; Sweet are Thy messengers, sweet their refrain, When they can sing with me, More love, O Christ, to Thee\u2026<\/p>\n
Then shall my latest breath whisper Thy praise; This be the parting cry my heart shall raise; This still its prayer shall be: More love, O Christ, to Thee.<\/p>\n
Tom White, \u201cLiving Testimonies,\u201d The Voice of the Martyrs, July, 1998, p. .2<\/p>\n
Pain is a Megaphone<\/b><\/p>\n
We can rest contentedly in our sins and in our stupidities, and everyone who has watched gluttons shoveling down the most exquisite foods as if they did not know what they were eating, will admit that we can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.<\/p>\n
C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain<\/p>\n
Response to <\/p>\n
I heard Professor Bruce Waltke describe a Christian\u2019s response to pain this way: We once rescued a wren from the claws of our cat. Thought its wing was broken, the frightened bird struggled to escape my loving hands.<\/p>\n
Contrast this with my daughter\u2019s recent trip to the doctor. Her strep throat meant a shot was necessary. Frightened, she cried, \u201cNo, Daddy. No, Daddy, No, Daddy.\u201d But all the while she gripped me tightly around the neck. Pain ought to make us more like a sick child than a hurt bird.<\/p>\n
Bruce Waltke<\/p>\n
Hymn to Christ<\/b><\/p>\n
Though thou with clouds of anger do disguise Thy face; yet through that mask I know those eyes, Which, though they turn away sometimes, They never will despise.<\/p>\n
John Donne, \u201cA Hymn to Christ\u201d<\/p>\n
Quote<\/b><\/p>\n
\u2022 Everything difficult indicates something more than our theory of life yet embraces. – George MacDonald<\/p>\n
Source unknown<\/p>\n
Leprosy Expert<\/b><\/p>\n
Dr. Paul W. Brand, the noted leprosy expert who was chief of the rehabilitation branch of the Leprosarium in Carville, Lousiana, had a frightening experience one night when he thought he had contracted leprosy. Dr. Brand arrived in London one night after an exhausting transatlantic ocean trip and long train ride from the English coast. He was getting ready for bed, had taken off his shoes, and as he pulled off a sock, discovered there was no feeling in his heel. To most anyone else this discovery would have meant very little, a momentary numbness. But Dr. Brand was world famous for his restorative surgery on lepers in India. He had convinced himself and his staff at the leprosarium that there was no danger of infection from leprosy after it reached a certain stage. The numbness in his heel terrified him. In her biography of Dr. Brand, Ten Fingers for God, Dorothy Clarke Wilson says,<\/p>\n
He rose mechanically, found a pin, sat down again, and pricked the small area below his ankle. He felt no pain. He thrust the pin deeper, until a speck of blood showed. Still he felt nothing\u2026He supposed, like other workers with leprosy, he had always half expected it.\u2026 In the beginning probably not a day had gone by without the automatic searching of his body for the telltale patch, the numbed area of skin.<\/p>\n
All that night the great orthopedic surgeon tried to imagine his new life as a leper, an outcast, his medical staff\u2019s confidence in their immunity shattered by his disaster. And the forced separation from his family. As night receded, he yielded to hope and in the morning, with clinical objectivity, \u2018with steady fingers he bared the skin below his ankle, jabbed in the point\u2014and yelled.\u2019<\/p>\n
Blessed was the sensation of pain! He realized that during the long train ride, sitting immobile, he had numbed a nerve. From then on, whenever Dr. Brand cut his finger, turned an ankle, even when he suffered from \u201cagonizing nausea as his whole body reacted in violent self-protection from mushroom poisoning, he was to respond with fervent gratitude, \u2018Thank God for pain!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Ten Fingers for God, by Dorothy Clarke Wilson, pp. 142-14.<\/p>\n
Good for the Sufferer and Spectators<\/b><\/p>\n
Pain is not good in itself. What is good in any painful experience is, for the sufferer, his submission to the will of God, and, for the spectators, the compassion aroused and the acts of mercy to which it leads.<\/p>\n
C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain<\/p>\n
Suffering in Silence<\/b><\/p>\n
The story is told about the baptism of King Aengus by St. Patrick in the middle of the fifth century. Sometime during the rite, St. Patrick leaned on his sharp-pointed staff and inadvertently stabbed the king\u2019s foot. After the baptism was over, St. Patrick looked down at all the blood, realized what he had done, and begged the king\u2019s forgiveness. \u201cWhy did you suffer this pain in silence,\u201d the Saint wanted to know. The king replied, \u201cI thought it was part of the ritual.\u201d<\/p>\n
Source unknown<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More Love to Thee, O Christ Elizabeth Prentiss, the wife of a Presbyterian minister, spent most of her adult life as an invalid, seldom knowing a day without constant pain throughout her body. Yet she was described by her friends as a bright-eyed, cheery woman with a keen sense of humor. Elizabeth was always strong … Continue reading “Pain”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}