48 Sermon Illustrations on Hopelessness

The total helplessness of God’s people often proves to be the backdrop for Yahweh’s deliverance.

It looked that bleak for the Federal frigate MINNESOTA one Saturday night in 1862 near Hampton Roads. That day the Confederate ironclad, the VIRGINIA (formerly the MERRIMAC), had revolutionized naval warfare. The VIRGINIA had already sunk the CONGRESS and CUMBERLAND, and when three additional wooden ships, including the MINNESOTA, had hurried to assist they had run aground.

The VIRGINIA withdrew for the night since the ebb tide prevented her from coming within effective range of the stranded MINNESOTA. After dawn the next day the VIRGINIA steamed toward her helpless prey for a certain kill. Suddenly, something looking like a raft with a boiler on it darted out from behind the MINNESOTA heading for the VIRGINIA. It was the MONITOR, the Federal ironclad commanded by John L. Worden. The MONITOR engaged the VIRGINIA in a four-hour duel that proved a draw. But the MINNESOTA was saved. The MONITOR had arrived during the night, put in alongside the MINNESOTA, and had kept her steam up. When it was most hopeless, help came.

That is frequently Yahweh’s way with his Israel. That is why the remnant refuses to lose heart. Not that his people enjoy their helpless condition; it is simply that they have seen God create deliverance out of nothing too many times to give themselves over to total despair.

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From Shelby Foote, “The Civil War, A Narrative,” volume 1, “Fort Sumter to Perryville (New York: Vintage, 1986), pp. 255-63.

"There are no hopeless situations; there are only people who have grown hopeless about them."

-- Clare Boothe Luce

"Everything that is done in the world is done by hope."

-- Martin Luther

"We should not let our fears hold us back from pursuing our hopes."

-- John Fitzgerald Kennedy, QFTM 2/14/04

"We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope."

-- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., QFTM 2/14/04

Noted psychiatrist Viktor Frankl barely survived a Nazi concentration camp in the 1940s. In a sobering account of its horrors. Frankl described how some prisoners lost touch with reality.

A prisoner who no longer saw hope for the future quickly would begin to decline physically and mentally. Then one day, without warning, he simply would give up. No amount of pleading by other prisoners, no amount of beating by the guards, no barking of threats brought any response. The prisoner just laid on his bunk corpse-like, uncaring, barely moving.

Admittedly that is an extreme situation of hopelessness. Few of us will ever face such desperate times.

Perhaps you have been there. Maybe you have lived for a while behind closed doors. Many good people have. I was reading recently about a young lawyer who descended into the valley of despond. Things were going so poorly for him that his friends thought it best to keep all knives and razors away from him for fear of a suicide attempt. In fact, during this time he wrote in his memoirs, “I am now the most miserable man living. Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell. I fear I shall not.” The young lawyer who unleashed these desperate feelings of utter hopelessness? His name was Abraham Lincoln.

Satan will try to make you think life is utterly hopeless. Why else would millionaire “grunge music” star Kurt Cobain kill himself? He sang of how he hated himself and wanted to die. And so he did, at the end of a shotgun. Why weren’t his fame and fortune enough? Why was he is such deep despair? Among other things, he no doubt felt emptiness inside.

Commenting on Cobain’s death, Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder, told of tearing up his hotel room in Washington, D.C. After that moment, it represented his world. People think you are some kind of grand person, he said, just because you can put your feelings into songs. Noting the irony of those who look to musicians for answers, he said: “They write letters and come to the shows ... hoping we can fix everything for them. But we can’t. What they don’t understand is that you can’t save somebody from drowning if you’re treading water yourself.”

Quoted in THE MEDIATOR, newsletter of Mastermedia International, vol. 9, no. 2.

Tom Sirotnak, WARRIORS, (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995), p. 24

Pope Pius V when dying cried out despairingly: “When I was in a low condition I had some hopes of salvation; when I was advanced to be a cardinal I greatly doubted it; but since I came to the popedom I have no hope at all.”

QUESTIONS ABOUT SUICIDE

FROM HILLCREST CHAPEL CHAT ROOMS

Here's a summary of your questions and comments: "Is suicide the ultimate sin? I know of a few people who have committed suicide and I wonder, can those who have committed suicide find a heavenly home? This troubles me as I hate to imagine anyone in hell. I am so glad I have my Jesus."

First of all, I want you to know I am sorry for your pain. The pain of losing a friend/acquaintance to suicide is very traumatic. I want to remind you, Jesus made it a priority to befriend people who felt the kind of pain you're feeling, and to help them find healing. They included a prostitute abused by men, a leper outcast by society, and countless others who suffered from loneliness, fear, and rejection. Jesus was a friend they could count on when no one else seemed to care. He was someone who loved and understood them-just like He loves and understands you.

Jesus also encouraged his followers to lean on one another. You too need someone to lean on. It's important for you to talk to your pastor or a Christian counselor about any deep pain you might be experiencing. With help, you can work through this difficult time and find hope and healing.

Every person I have ever talked to about suicide brings up this same question. "Can those who have committed suicide find a heavenly home...is suicide the ultimate sin?"

Before I answer the question, remember:

"Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. For some people, suicide seems like the easiest way to get rid of their deep pain. But when they truly look at the problems causing these intense feelings, there is always a better answer than suicide."

There are no easy answers to this important question, but I will give you some beginning responses.

"Is suicide always wrong?" My point blank answer is, "Yes." Ending one's own life is never the right solution to problems. There are much better solutions. I recently read about a person who once contemplated suicide. Today she is very happy and making a difference in the lives of many people. She's glad she didn't kill herself, and so am I. There were better solutions to her pain!

You asked: "Can those who have committed suicide find a heavenly home? This troubles me as I hate to imagine anyone in hell. I am so glad I have my Jesus."

You have really asked two questions: Will anyone go to hell for any reason? ("I hate to imagine anyone in hell"), and, Will those who commit suicide go to hell?

The question is difficult to respond to-because it could sound as if I personally am the one making some kind of judgement about who will and who will not make it into eternity with God.

If the Bible were written to describe a politically correct god, one who met the present demand of our culture to disallow any moral absolutes, then of course the answer would be easy. ("No one has to worry; believe what you want, it doesn't matter; if there is a heaven, we all go-no discrimination allowed. It's our right to have equal treatment under the law.")

Of course, however, that isn't what the Bible teaches about truth-except for the part about equal treatment. The real question isn't how you or I feel about the teaching of Scripture concerning eternity, but what the Bible says. Long before our politically correct society, the God of the universe is on record as saying that "He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance"-I Peter 3:9. In other words, God doesn't want to see anyone go to hell or perish. Jesus said in John 10:10-"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." It is clear, the God of the Bible wants all to have life and to have it abundantly. To assure that everyone has a chance to experience that full life, Jesus came to take our place and made a way for all who believe and come to repentance through His death and resurrection. Thus, we can be assured of eternal life with God. John 3:16-"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17] For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."

God doesn't want anyone to go to hell, but He leaves the choice of eternal life or eternal death to us. We can choose our own eternal destiny by choosing to repent of our sins and to believe in Jesus, or we can choose to perish. It seems like a no-brainer to me!

Why not choose life through Jesus?

In answer to your question, "Can those who have committed suicide find a heavenly home?": In order to answer that question, we must first ask, "Has the person committing suicide chosen to believe, repent of his/her sins and follow Jesus with his/her whole heart? If that person has, then the question is: "What happens to a genuine believer who chooses to commit suicide-will he find a heavenly home?" What will be that person's eternal destiny?

Well, I think you can understand your question is one only God will answer. I will try to give you the perspective I have from the Scripture, but it isn't easy. A simple yes or no will not be sufficient. I'm not sure who will read this, and I certainly don't want any believer to think it is okay to end his/her life because eternity is taken care of.

Here's my response in several points:

1) "Is suicide the ultimate sin?" Because of what the Scriptures say, suicide is a sin, but as I have said, it isn't the unpardonable sin. Ending one's own life violates the commandment that very specifically states, "You shall not murder"-Exodus 20:13. There is only one unpardonable sin, however, and that is a refusal to accept the gift of life Jesus offers. If we die without making that decision, then tragically we will get what we want-eternity without God.

2) A follow-up or related question that follows the above point is: "If a Christian commits any sin and does not have a chance to repent of that sin before he dies (e.g., tells a lie, walks across the street and before repenting gets hit by a car and is killed), will that send him to hell?" The answer has to be no! (You should know there are many believers who disagree with my answer. They believe if you commit any sin, you lose your salvation and must repent before you are a Christian again.) I don't think anyone will be able to live a perfect life-one which has its accounts with God perfectly settled at all times. But I do believe the Bible calls us to walk an obedient life with short accounts with God.

Here's a passage written to Christians: 1 John 1:7-2:1-"But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all [or 'every'] sin . 8] If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9] If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10] If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives. 2:1] My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense-Jesus Christ, the Righteous One."

God knew we would sin and are sinners, but He has provided a way for us to be be forgiven and cleansed. Even with that provision, however, we are still human; we will not be perfect in our confession to God. I believe the grace of God will be evidenced at death as well as at the moment we become Christians. But having said that, let me quickly say there will be consequences for unconfessed sin and inappropriate action/works in eternity as well as on earth.

For example, 3) Suicide is also a sin against those who are left. It might seem to the one who commits suicide like a solution to end the pain, but in the process it has left people behind who will feel greater pain, maybe even suffering, for the rest of their lives.

4) In addition, all believers will have to face God some day and give an account for their lives as Christians. Many Christians don't understand that though they make it into heaven, at the Judgment seat of Christ they will have to stand and give an account for the works they have done. 2 Cor. 5:10-"For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad." Couple those verses with those in I Cor 3:12-15. 12] If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, 13] his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. 14] If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. 15] If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames."

From those verses we begin to see the impact of lost opportunity and works from the suicide of a Christian. He will have to give an account for

? the will of God that was not accomplished ? ? those he would have influenced for the good ? ? the children not born to him because of a premature ending to his life ? ? the life that did not finish giving praise to God because of its good deeds. ? There will also be the loss of rewards that God has for those who are faithful in serving him. (See II Cor. 5:10; I Cor. 3:15.)

5) Beyond that reward, there are the positive things a person committing suicide will miss:

? the unselfish love of other human beings ? ? the potential for being a parent and/or raising a child ? ? the joy of being a grandparent ? ? the thrill of doing the will of God ? ? the joy of leading someone to Christ ? ? the fulfillment of living a full life and looking back on it with the sense of accomplishment and joy for what God has given to and done through him. ?

6) For many other reasons, it is a tragic and selfish decision to commit suicide. I have in my files an article, "45 Reasons to Say No to Suicide."

I think you get the idea that even though a sincere believer in Christ will make it into eternity with Him, he and others will face consequences because of his sin.

How can something good come out of something so awful? One of the ways you can bring some healing to yourself and certainly to others is to prepare yourself to answer, counsel, and refer those you know who might be contemplating suicide.

See also "Highway to Nowhere" [at HolwickID #]. It tells the story of an attempted suicide and concludes with some help on how to recognize signs of suicidal intention and help a suicidal friend recognize the signs.

I sure do pray I have helped in my response. If there is a need for any further clarification, I would appreciate hearing from you. You can reach me at bob@hillcrestchapel.com.

____________________________

©2002 Hillcrest Chapel. 1400 Larrabee, Bellingham, WA 98225. 360-733-8400, hillcrestchapel@aol.com.

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They called him "Pops" around the Butte County, California, jail. However, his real name was Coval Russell. He was 92 years old and serving 14 months for trying to kill his 70-year-old landlord over a petty dispute. The report in The Los Angeles Times [July 11, 2002] claimed his year in jail was the best year of his nine-decades-long life; evidently, Russell had few positive life encounters prior to incarceration.

Yet, jailers and inmates alike befriended their senior citizen neighbor. His new family tried to make the tall, lanky Oklahoma native as comfortable as possible; they provided an extra mattress, first spot in the chow line, extra television time, even additional outside calls for medications (he had prostrate cancer). The younger men considered themselves his grandkids.

Upon serving his term, Russell petitioned the judge to be allowed to remain in jail. He told the jurist the people in jail treated him with more respect than those on the outside. "They treat me like a human being in there," he supposedly said. His appeal was rejected.

As a result, the distraught man told friends he had but two options - either to violate his parole in order to return to jail or to take him own life. On Wednesday, 11 July 2002, Coval Russell, the WWII veteran, who risked his life for his fellow Americans, jumped from a bridge over the Feather River, to his death.

People - family, friends, and neighbors - who should have and could have given him a third option, didn’t; people who had little to give and little power to give at all, gave all they had. They gave him what they thought he needed but missed the mark by a light-year.

What Coval Russell really wanted and needed was hope, and hope is what a man gets when he has a right relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. He was abandoned and disrespected by a callused and indifferent world. Christ, the lover of his soul, would never abandon him and would give him all the respect a man could imagine.

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Source/Attribution: John Gillmartin; SIEW

Trivia time. What GE-sponsored TV show did Ronald Reagan host before he became President? You're probably way too young to know the answer, right? OK. Wait a minute, wait a minute ... that older fellow in the back. What did you say? Yes, a program called “Death Valley Days.” That's right! It was all about that hot and hostile stretch of California known as Death Valley - and the stories of what people faced in that place that all too often lived up to its name.

Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “Life in Your Death Valley.”

Talk about Death Valley days! There is a story in the Bible that took one of God's prophets into what was literally Death Valley. But it's more than the story of just an ancient prophet. It mirrors a miracle that many of God's people have seen over the years, and it's one you may need to believe Him for right now.

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Ezekiel where God brings Ezekiel into a valley that is full of “a great many bones ... that were very dry.” God asks him, “Can these bones live?” Then God gives his prophet a message to deliver to this mountain of dry bones. “I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.” (Ezekiel 37:1-6)

Ezekiel says, “As I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone.” Then he reports that tendons and flesh appeared on those animated skeletons and then “they came to life and stood up on their feet - a vast army.” God then revealed to Ezekiel that these bones actually represented His people, for whom He had this message: “My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you out from them ... I will put my Spirit in you and you will live.”

So there's Death Valley - something or someone that looks like it will never come to life. Like a marriage for which there seems no hope, or one of your children, or even your church; maybe a ministry you've been involved with. It could be a valued relationship that seems dead for good or someone who seems spiritually dead and beyond reaching. Or even a dream you felt was from God. I don't know what's lying there dead in your Death Valley. But I do know this - God can revive what seems like it's gone forever! He did it in Ezekiel's valley of dry bones. He did it on that first Easter morning. He's done it in countless hopeless situations over the centuries, and He can do it for you.

Your mission? Rekindle your defiant prayer to the God who resurrects what everyone else calls “dead.” In Luke 18:1, Jesus said, we “should always pray and not give up.” Then get a group of people who will join with you in fervent prayer that defies the dying, and keep storming the Throne of Grace for a life-giving miracle. And make yourself available to God to do whatever He directs - to play whatever part He wants you to play in helping bring life to “death valley,” even if it means humbling yourself, making sacrifices, forgetting how you're going to look - whatever it takes.

The God who made a living army out of a pile of dry bones has the power to bring life where there's been so much dryness, so much dying. It's way too soon to give up.

________________

Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #18447]

The BBC website carried a tragic story written by a mother about her son. He had always been carefree and a little mischievous. He wasn’t a genius but he worked hard enough to get into a English university. After they dropped him off there, they didn’t hear much from him. They called him repeatedly, but he never called back.

Their son did come home for holidays and he seemed OK, but when he went back to school he closed them off again. They called the university to see how he was doing academically. Because of privacy laws - just like in the United States - they were told nothing.

A while later, in his second year, they found out he had dropped out. He tried to become a fireman, but failed. He ended up in a low-level clerk job but often hinted that better things were coming - things which his parents later found were imaginary.

The parents went on a short vacation and when they returned home they found a handwritten note on the door. The police wanted the parents to call them. They called and were told their son had taken his life. He was only 20 years old.

The mother titled her article, “I wish I’d told my son he could start again after dropping out.” He had a caring family and good friends. What he didn’t have is any hope.

________

"I wish I’d told my son he could start again after dropping out," by Zoe, September 10, 2017; BBC: Magazine.

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[Previous illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #5006]

National Post writer Allen Abel recently spoke to 12 unusual Canadians who have undergone extraordinary experiences. In the ninth part of our series, he speaks to Kent Bannatyne, 44, a photocopier service technician in Victoria, B.C. Last August, Mr. Bannatyne was infected with necrotizing fasciitis, also known as flesh-eating disease.

---

What basically happened is that I cut my finger in a copier. I was on a two-week training course over in Richmond when it happened. I was reaching in to try to feel exactly where a mirror was on the inside of the copier, so I could figure out the path of the laser. As I was pulling my hand out, I just nicked it on an edge -- the metal inside a copier is cut with a laser, so the edges are very, very sharp.

It took maybe a quarter-inch square of skin off my left index finger, near the knuckle. It bled for a couple of minutes and I wrapped it in a paper towel until it stopped. I used to work on cars and I cut myself all the time -- that's what hands do, they get cut and they get calloused. So I didn't think anything of it.

The next morning, I woke up with my finger swollen to twice its normal size. So I figured I had an infection and I popped the scab off and squeezed out the pus. I was staying in a hotel during the training course, so when I got in to work, I asked them for an antiseptic and cleaned it out.

I figured it's a done deal, right?

That night the course ended and I got on the ferry and came back over to the island -- I was living in Courtenay at the time -- and drove home. I was really beat; I turned on the TV, lay down on the couch and fell asleep.

I woke up the next morning really ill. I thought I had the flu and my left shoulder was killing me -- I thought I had slept wrong or something and dislocated my shoulder. I played football in high school, and I dislocated my elbows, and that's what it felt like. Like it had popped out of place.

This was a Saturday; I sat around all day and tried to get rid of the flu. I took vitamins and drank plenty of liquids and I figured maybe it'll be better tomorrow.

I woke up Sunday and the flu is worse and my shoulder is still killing me. I went to the walk-in clinic and the doctor said, "You need X-rays," and he sent me to the Courtenay hospital in a taxi because I was already feeling too sick to drive.

When I got to the hospital, the doctors were having one of their walkouts, so there was a very low level of staffing. But at some point, they recognized that they had something that they didn't know how to handle and within a few hours they were making arrangements to fly me to Victoria or Vancouver in a helicopter.

They wouldn't tell me what they were thinking. They just said, "You're very, very sick." They asked me the name and number of my closest relative and I gave them my father's number in Kimberley, B.C., but the next thing I know, I get a call from my sister in Nebraska and she's bawling her eyes out. Meanwhile, I'm still thinking, I'll be OK, it's just the flu.

They flew me to Victoria General. I woke up the next day and my mother and sister were there and they had tubes in me and I was on pretty heavy doses of medication. My face was just a mess of tubes coming out of me. It was so swollen up there were no recognizable features. My mother was sitting there next to me, but my sister was sort of hiding behind her, like she couldn't bear to look at me because she was so scared.

That's the last thing I remember for three weeks. Three weeks later, I woke up and my mother was there and she said, "You had flesh-eating disease and you almost died."

And I just said, "Where was I eaten?"

They said I lost 7% of my flesh on my left side and across my chest. It turns out it was a classic case: flu-like symptoms and then severe pain in close proximity to a cut or bruise.

It's the same bacteria as strep throat. They say that 1% of adults are carrying strep in them, but they don't know it. Some people get strep throat. Some people get necrotizing fasciitis. Nobody knows why.

After it infects the body, it's looking for nodes or organs. So it finds the node under my arm and swelled up so much that it moved my shoulder up and out of place. It takes over one part of the body and then it goes looking for more organs or muscles to eat.

It travels approximately three centimetres an hour, killing everything in its path.

It ate part of my left bicep, travelled across my chest and down my rib cage. We think that the ribs kept it from getting in to eat the internal organs. That's probably what saved my life.

It was pretty weird. I'd only heard of one case of flesh-eating disease before I got it and it wasn't Bouchard. When Bouchard happened, I didn't even acknowledge it. But I had seen a story on TV about a little girl that got it and the little girl died. That's the one I remembered.

When I woke up from the drug-induced coma, I was just thinking, "What's going to happen to me?" and nobody's really telling me anything. Finally, the plastic surgeon showed up to try to start weaning me off morphine, and he told me that the infection was gone and that it would probably take a number of months to get my body going again.

I had seven operations to put my chest back together. I had an implant, a "skin grower" -- it's like getting a boob, basically. They take all that skin and stretch it out so I don't have a hole across my chest any more. I looked like a skinned cow or a deer -- it looks like a raw steak is what it looks like.

With flesh-eating disease, usually you either live or you die. But it's been eight months since they said the infection was gone, and I'm still not able to live my life.

I've lost all control of my bodily functions below the waist. I can walk, but I can't stand still in one place without leaning on something. I can't control my bladder. They don't know why it's happening -- it seems like it ate a nerve in my back or something.

I can't go back to work until I get training in another field. I guess I'll become a computer geek or something. I just feel cheated.

The way society looks at it, it's a gross disease. They say, "You're losing flesh, euw."

But I'm still alive. I beat this thing.

My badge of honour is going to come from helping other people. I went back to the clinic in Courtenay and I thanked the doctor for saving my life because he's the one who sent me to the hospital in the first place. I thanked him for saving my life from necrotizing fasciitis.

He said, "But I've never seen a case of necrotizing fasciitis."

And I said, "Yes, you have: me."

Less than 4 percent of Native Americans in North America are being effectively reached with the Gospel, Alpha Goombi, a Southern Baptist missionary from Nebraska, said during the 2003 National Acteens Convention.

Goombi, a Native American, recalled a time in southwest Oklahoma as she was growing up that “I was not allowed to be a member of any of the churches -- including the Baptist churches -- in my hometown because of the color of my skin.”

“The only people that came out to evangelize were Mormons, and my mom would close the door and we would hide in the closet when we saw the Mormons coming because she was scared of them,” Goombi recounted to the audience of 6,500 teenage girls and their missions leaders. “But you know, when they brought bread and they brought flour and they brought sugar to us, we would open the door.”

But no one came out to tell them the true Gospel, Goombi said.

As she went through school, some of Goombi's teachers told her she would never amount to anything because she was an Indian and did not have the capacity to learn, she said.

“And when two of my uncles came back from the Vietnam War they began to sexually abuse all the little girls that were in our family, including me,” Goombi said. “So when I grew up, I had such hate and bitterness in my heart. And I can't tell you what hurt more -- the prejudice or the sexual abuse.”

At the age of 18, Goombi turned to alcohol, she said, and fell deeper into despair. But then she married a man from a good family and moved to Norman, Oklahoma, and attended the University of Oklahoma.

“And there was a missionary that someone sent, that the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering [funded], that [Woman's Missionary Union] prayed for, and he was a full-blooded Indian,” she told the Acteens. “And he came to our house week after week with a smile on his face.”

Goombi said she wondered why the missionary was smiling. There was no reason to smile, she thought, having attempted to commit suicide and being accustomed to partying on the weekends and doing drugs.

“[One day] I was screaming at my husband,” she said. “And, you know, when you're really into yourself, when you think you're the center of the universe, that's a destructive life. So I screamed at my husband as an excuse to go and get drunk, and I screamed, 'I don't want to be your wife,' and I screamed at my son, 'I don't want to be your mother.'“

Goombi said her son then looked up at her and asked with tears running down his face, “Momma, what did I do to you?”

“And at that moment, the prayers of one person, the going of one person and the giving of one person brought me to the end of myself,” she said with tears in her eyes. “I realized I needed a Savior, I needed to be saved, and I knew it was Jesus Christ.”

The missionary came to visit again, and Goombi and her family went with him to church at the little Indian mission in Norman, she said.

“I gave my heart to Jesus, and I never looked back,” Goombi said as the Acteens cheered.

When she heard the Great Commission to go to all people, she couldn't sit there any longer. She had a new life and new salvation, and God led her to the mission field in Nebraska. Now she and her husband serve at the Omaha Baptist Center, where they minister to people from all over the world including Sudanese, Koreans and Japanese. And because of her heritage, God led her to serve among Native Americans as well.

Goombi told the Acteens that North Americans are “the most over-evangelized people in the world, yet we are very unsuccessful at reaching Native Americans.”

Goombi asked the girls to pray that God will send more missionaries to Native Americans and that churches would open their doors to those in their own backyard -- not only the Native Americans but the poor whites, the poor blacks and the poor of every nation.

“You can make a difference in your church,” Goombi told the girls. “If your church is closed to sharing the Gospel, maybe you can be that difference that someone can make in the life of a little Indian girl like me.”

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Maybe you've worked through a Bible study written by Beth Moore, heard her speak at a conference or read one of her books –- and sensed that she's like a friend who understands what you're going through because she's been there as well.

“I don't struggle much anymore with trying to appear to be something I'm not,” Moore said. “I think that's a struggle especially for believers because there's such an expectation of what 'church people' ought to look like. And in all fairness to the body of Christ, we also want to be that way.

“In my young adult years, I wanted so much to be a righteous young woman, so I certainly wanted to appear that way and behave that way as much as I could,” Moore said. “I used to look around and think everybody had it together, and I was the only one cycling in and out of a pit.”

But, Moore said, now that she is a middle-aged woman she understands that others didn't have it all together. “The fact that they acted like they did, though, left me feeling hopeless. It's so harmful.

“I want people to know I struggled because I want them to feel hope,” she said.

As a young woman, “I really did have a heart for God,” she reflected. “I wanted so much to be good, but I had a very hard time figuring out how to do that on any kind of consistent basis. I had so many hurts, so many things I was dealing with that were not very obvious in a lot of ways from the outside.

“I became desperate and began to act out of my handicapped state -- and by 'handicapped' I mean of heart and of mind.”

Through years of ministry, she has realized that literally thousands of women feel the way she used to feel.

“They think, 'If people really knew I'm struggling with this in my home ... or I have this temptation or that, they would think I'm a terrible person and I can't get my spiritual life together,'“ she said. “We need to just say, 'I am so challenged to live in any kind of consistent victory, and I need help learning how.’ That's where we need to be.

“We have to learn to be more honest with one another in the body of Christ and certainly more honest with God,” Moore said. That outlook, she said, has become “a great help to me.”

A big part of Moore's ministry is challenging women to pursue the call of God on their lives -- the good work He desires to complete in each of them, whether it's vocational ministry or something else.

But she is concerned that many women never come to understand their calling.

“We may do good works and noble things, but we will not be able to make the mark God desires for us to make for His kingdom,” she said. “That's why it's critical that each believer seek to know God through His Word -- because that's where it's going to be revealed.”

It was a head-on collision with God and His Word that healed Moore's heart so dramatically and miraculously that she wanted to share it with others.

“My ministry was born out of pain and of finding that His Word was my prescription, and He was my healer.”

Another major spiritual breakthrough occurred when she grasped the difference between really believing God and simply believing in Him.

“Our salvation,” she said, “begins with believing in God, of course,” coming to a place of acknowledging that Christ Jesus is the Son of God and thus believing in Him unto salvation.

“Believing Him means I take that step past believing in Him -- I believe what His Word said is so; I believe He is who He said He is; I believe He can do what He said He can do; I believe I am who God said I am. There's a world of difference between those two.”

Now, instead of looking to God simply as a source of answers or direction, she asks God to cause His Word to “literally jump into my belief system and flow in my bone marrow. I want it to become part of me; I want it to change the way I think.”

Realizing that absolutely nothing is impossible for God has changed her radically.

“I am proof that He can pull any life out of a pit,” Moore said. “And that He would be gracious and merciful enough to forgive and redeem and dare to use me - - that He would have chanced His good name on someone like me -- is inconceivable.”

*

[Original illustration here was a duplicate in HolwickID 25837-26027]

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” writes Henry David Thoreau. “What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.”

I thought of these words as I was playing tourist this summer in my hometown near the shores of Lake Michigan. On a guided ride through the massive sand dunes of Silver Lake, we stopped at the highest point of the dunes. With lines he'd been using for years, our guide offered a few statistics as he pointed out the scenes around us. From the hill we could see the smaller lake and the big lake, a historic lighthouse, and the endless shifting dunes that slowly engulf the small forests around them. Most of his words were lost in the beauty of the scene itself, but I tuned in as he described the survival tactics of the birch trees beside us. “These trees,” he said, pointing to trees that were no more than 10 feet high, “are upwards of 35 feet tall.” They are trees assailed each year by shifting sands and changing hillsides. When their branches are enveloped by sand, leaves die from lack of sunlight, but the branches become roots.

I don't know why Thoreau's words hit me at that moment as I took in the clever tactics of a handful of scrappy trees. I was impressed with their display of life, their fight to survive in a world that kept smothering them. Perhaps it was their quiet perseverance in an uncertain world that drew a sharp contrast to my own behavior in stifling moments and changing winds. Looking out from that which overwhelms me, I am easily resigned to lightlessness.

In 1845 Henry David Thoreau left his pencil-manufacturing business and moved to the woods of Massachusetts. Walden is the lyrical record of the 26 months he spent in withdrawal from society in a cabin on the shore of Walden Pond. Written 150 years ago, many of his words still meet us as he hoped them to, like a “chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, to wake my neighbors up.” One of Thoreau's concerns was that the world was being dulled by the bombardment of an unending flow of news, and a fascination with trivial events. “We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas” he writes, “but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”

Standing atop the mountains of the information age, it doesn't take much to see the relevance of this concern. Turning on the news each day or jumping on the Internet to get the headlines, a task I do faithfully, I am ashamed at how easily I am taken in by stories that are less “news” and more gossip. But then even the stories that are certainly newsworthy can all too easily become a weight that buries me in fear, or engulfs me in a concern that, though real, is riddled with the possibility that I will miss the point. Though neither Thoreau nor I would contend that news consumption is bad, information abounds in overwhelming degrees. Each fact, each story, owns the potential to move our emotions like sand dunes, cutting us off from hope and light.

We live in a world of shifting uncertainties where the potential to resign ourselves to fear or hopelessness is real. In Psalm 1 we are reminded that the one is blessed whose certainty is the Lord, whose hope is in God's unchanging presence. “He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.” In this changing culture of disheartening headlines and distracting information, many lead lives of quiet desperation. Still many others grow roots where life buries branches.

________

Copyright © 2004 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

When Napoleon flung his troops across the Alps, and they were climbing their way over the snowy peaks to the sunlit plains of Italy, a most pathetic incident took place. A little drummer-boy was caught by a sliding avalanche on the mountain and shot into the crevasse. Unhurt, he found himself on the ledge. Far above him was the winding host going zigzag up the mountain. The soldiers who had witnessed the accident looked back, but they dared not turn aside; it was “Onward!”

The little lad commenced to play on his drum the relief call, and they heard him. Many a father in that French army, I think, wished there would come orders to relieve the lad; and then, as they wound out of sight and again came into view, they heard the appeal on the drum. Napoleon was told what had happened, but what was a little drummer-boy to him? What was a little drummer-boy to the great host that he was leading over the Alps, and he would not give the order to save the lad. “March on!”

The lad noticed the forms of his comrades getting fainter and fainter, and when he saw that there was to be no rescue, that he had to lie down and die, they heard him stop the relief call on his drum. A few minutes he waited, and then they heard him beating his own funeral march. The veterans in that army wept. They wept, and as they told of it by the campfires years after, they wept again. The lad beat his own funeral march; he had to lie down and die. There was no rescue, no hope, nothing but despair and death.

Aye, but that is not the story of the Cross. There is a funeral march being played from the judgment hall, and on the cross out side the city; and when I tell you that Jesus Christ died, the real Son of God, the substitute for us, there is life as a result of the funeral march. There is joy, and there is gladness, come from the death of Christ.

-- John Robertson

The life of each one is precious to our great Commander, even the life of the most insignificant “drummer-boy” in His army. Still, each of us should stand ready to die, when by our death Christ’s eternal purposes march forward, unhindered by us.

-- Duane V. Maxey

While many look to the government, material possessions, drugs or pleasure, they quickly find that these only lead to temporary distractions on a lifelong quest for happiness.

Never have so many people been so unhappy, as they are today. Perhaps the true source of despair and hopelessness among many people today is simply the recognition that life isn’t what it ought to be. Some of the things that promised them satisfaction and joy have not delivered on the promise.

One thing I can tell you for certain is you can’t live very long without hope. Hope is a main ingredient in life. It is the very core of who you are and your existence as a person.

Psalm 146 is called one of the hallelujah psalms, meaning they “praise the Lord.” And the hallelujah psalm in Psalm 146 portrays a wonderful picture of hope. It is an invitation to those who know despair all too well. It presents an opportunity to take another look at the hope that can only be found in God.

Let’s work through this psalm together on three key points, all of them leading to the One who can and will provide.

1. There is a strong resolution to find hope in God.

In verses two and three the psalmist writes, “Praise the Lord, oh my soul, while I live I will praise the Lord; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.” Hope in God is a decision that we make. Sooner or later in our life we come to a fork in the road where we have to make a choice. Either we will put our faith in our own strength or we will make our journey toward God. The psalmist here, with great resolution, says, “I will praise and sing unto my God.”

2. There is a strong resolution to reject placing hope in man. The psalmist writes, “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.” It is a very interesting day for us at this particular juncture in history. If you examine the lives of our leaders, you will discover they have glaring flaws. The psalmist challenges us not to put our hope in these mortal men or women, but rather we should put our hope in God who lives forever and reigns throughout all generations.

3. There is a strong resolution that man’s plans will end, but God’s truth lasts forever.

The last part of the psalm contains some of the most encouraging truth I have read on this subject of hope. The question is, “What can God do for those who look to Him for help?” The description given for those whom God helps makes room for all of us. The psalmist writes, “He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free, the Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow.” God allows hope to spring out of hopelessness for all people.

Life has a way of setting us on the course of hopelessness unless we have God at the center of our lives to hold us steady. I want to challenge you that if you don’t have hope in your life today, begin to cultivate it by looking to God as your source of strength. When you feel you are sinking into despair, ask yourself the question of the Psalmist in Psalm 42, “Why art thou cast down O my soul? Hope thou in God.”

Lamentations 3:19-24 is the basis of the hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness” and contains a powerful message about hope in the midst of hopelessness.

Imagine being in the shoes of the author, Jeremiah. After years of prophesying of the coming doom of Jerusalem, after years of witnessing spiritual infidelity on the part of the people, God’s judgment in the form of the Babylonian exile had finally come in 586 B.C.

Babylon laid siege to the city for 18 months. People were starving. The hands of compassionate women even boiled their own children, being reduced by their desperate hunger to cannibalism (4:9-10). Finally, the invading nation breached the walls. They slaughtered many. Others they removed from their beloved Promised Land, dragging them across the desert with bronze hooks in their noses to a pagan land, never to see their homeland again. The temple of God’s presence -- Solomon’s temple -- was razed to the ground. And Zedekiah, the Davidic king, the source of messianic hope, had sons killed before his eyes before having his own eyes gouged out.

Only Jeremiah and the poorest of the poor remained in the ruined city, devoid of provision, protection, and prospects. Jeremiah’s response to the devastation was Lamentations -- a series of laments composed as alphabetic acrostics to express his complete and profound grief over the events.

Yet in the center of the book, in the longest of the laments, surrounded by bitter expressions of despair and despondency, Jeremiah found hope -- a sure and certain hope. It was a hope based not in his circumstances, but upon the firm foundation of God’s character. When all Judah believed God had abandoned them to the hopelessness of the exile, Jeremiah confessed his firm faith in the enduring faithfulness and lovingkindness of God. When even the most compassionate earthly mothers failed, Jeremiah confessed that God’s compassions never fail.

Most preachers wouldn’t dare to tackle writing a sermon and a hymn for their congregation, but that was par for the course for Pastor John and his peers. On New Year’s 1773, he was preaching through 1 Chronicles 17, expositing God’s promise to David.

“Who am I, Lord God, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far?” David asks in his prayer. “And as if this were not enough in your sight, my God, you have spoken about the future of the house of your servant. You, Lord God, have looked on me as though I were the most exalted of men. What more can David say to you for honoring your servant? For you know your servant, Lord. For the sake of your servant and according to your will, you have done this great thing and made known all these great promises.”

David and Pastor John both were overwhelmed by God’s grace. Amazing grace, even. And so David’s prayer in the hands of a slave trader-turned-pastor named John Newton became the lyrics to one of the most sung hymns – or songs of any sort – ever. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.” The seeds for each verse are in 1 Chronicles 17 for those who read closely.

‘How sweet the sound’

2023 marks the 250th anniversary of the hymn, a song synonymous with Christian victory in the face of dangers, toils and snares, as well as man’s overwhelming sin.

“‘Amazing Grace’ is a timeless hymn,” said Matt Swain, the assistant dean of Worship Ministries at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (MBTS). “It spans the ages and it had spoken to generations and people from all different walks of life. Even people who are not Christians or religious at all know the tune and the text to ‘Amazing Grace.’ What’s interesting is that even though everybody just seems to know it, they don’t necessarily quite understand what it is that the hymn is really about, which is somewhat ironic.”

‘I once was lost’

There can be no doubt that Newton knew of what he preached and wrote. In his youth, he famously took to the sea and was heavily involved in the slave trade. He neglected his faith and mocked God and those who believed. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he had a bad reputation ... among slave traders. He was a foul-mouthed, insubordinate wretch, even to the point of being imprisoned while at sea, chained alongside the slaves he was transporting. It would take amazing grace, indeed, to save him.

In March 1748, while his ship was tossed by a violent storm in the North Atlantic, a crew member who was standing where Newton had been moments before was swept overboard. He and his crewmates labored for hours to pump water from the ship, and expecting to be capsized at any moment.

The ship did not sink, and two weeks later when it limped into the harbor, Newton began to ponder the mercy he’d been shown. Was he worthy of God’s mercy? Was he redeemable?

‘But now I’m found’

His conversion was not immediate then and there, but the seed of the gospel was taking root and making his need for forgiveness impossible to ignore. “I was greatly deficient in many respects,” he wrote. “I cannot consider myself to have been a believer in the full sense of the word, until a considerable time afterwards.”

He continued sailing in the slave trade between Africa and the New World, but he also got married and soon found himself physically unable and unwilling to meet the demands of life on the open seas. Returning to the teachings of childhood, he began to teach himself Latin, Greek and theology. He and his wife, Mary, threw themselves in the church community, and by 1764 he was offered a pastoral role in Olney, a village of about 2,500 people about 50 miles north of London.

It was there he began preaching and presenting poems and songs to reinforce the message of his sermons. A few years later, “Amazing Grace” was born.

“This song really came out of a life of hopelessness, Matt Swain said. “As a sinner – as a wretch – he was radically saved and started a life of ministry and servitude unto the Lord by grace.

“This is just conjecture on my part,” Matt said, “but I don’t know how he could not have been impacted when he looked back on his life, much like David, by seeing the miraculous things that God has done. In some ways it’s testimonial, but I don’t know that it was overtly meant to be testimonial so much as it’s just how grace works in the life of the believer. But you can’t just read through the hymn and know his story and not think, ‘Wow, he had to have had that on his mind.”

‘Grace will lead me Home’

But Newton was more than just a redeemed hymn writer with a dark past. A few years after “Amazing Grace,” in 1779, he moved to London where he continued preaching. He was one of only two evangelical Anglican priests in the capital, and he grew in popularity, even among the Methodists and Baptists of the time.

It was during this time he connected with William Wilberforce, a young member of Parliament who was struggling with staying in office while seeing evil in the world such as slavery. When he sought Newton’s advice, he advised him to “serve God where he was.” Wilberforce followed his advice, and his political views were informed by his faith and by his desire to promote Christianity and Christian ethics in private and public. That included a vocal and active fight for the abolition of slavery, one that Newton joined.

“In many ways, John Newton was kind of like the Billy Graham of his day,” said Angela Swain, associate professor of music at MBTS. “If you think of how Billy Graham was to many of our presidents, that’s how John Newton was to William Wilberforce.”

Three decades after he had retired from the slave trade, Newton published a pamphlet called, “Thoughts Upon the Slave Trade,” describing the horrific conditions of the slave ships during his service as crew. The confession and apology, he wrote, “will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.”

Thanks in part to both men, the Slave Trade Act of 1807 brought British involvement in slavery to an end.

While the end of slavery in the New World was still decades away, “Amazing Grace” and its gospel message were taking hold in Britain.

‘No less days to sing God’s praise’

As profound and simple as it is, Newton’s song didn’t exactly catch on at home, and Newton was ready the next week to write a new song.

“It only became popular later in the United States,” Angela said. “Irony of ironies.”

It caught on in the U.S. in part due to its musicality and folk-melody, but largely, the Swains believe, due to its message during the Second Great Awakening.

“Theology leads to our doxology,” Angela said.

“It’s so plainly a song about the gospel,” Matt continued. “Whether we were saved from something like the slave trade, or if our conversion was less notable than John Newton’s, it still speaks of the power of God unto salvation. For those that experience that grace, we are being brought from death to life, and that in and of itself is a radical thing.”

That popularity lives on, even two and half centuries later.

“Lots of people embrace the hymn,” Matt said. “I mean, Elvis Presley sang it.”

But beyond the music and at its foundation, “Amazing Grace” is still about the gospel, and that’s potentially what has made the hymn stick around in the cultural consciousness.

“Strong hymns have strong theology,” Matt said. “It’s the grace we’ve been given that gives it that power for those of us who have been saved through the blood of Christ. It’s an even more powerful testimony to know the life of John Newton, to see what the gospel can do in his life of sin.”

________

This article first appeared at The Pathway.

I read a story a couple of weeks ago about a woman who was dying of AIDS: she summoned a minister to comfort her, but it seemed hopeless... "I'm lost," she said, "I've ruined my life and every life around me. I'm headed for hell. There's no hope for me." The minister saw a framed picture of a pretty girl on the dresser. "Who is that?" he asked. The woman brightened, "She's my daughter, the one beautiful thing in my life." "Would you help her if she was in trouble, no matter how many mistakes she'd made? Would you forgive her if she asked you to? Would you still lover her, no matter what?" "Of course I would," the woman exclaimed. "Why would you even ask a question like that?" "Because I want you to understand," explained the minister, "That God has a picture of you on his dresser, too."

TS-Cal Thomas says, "Love talked about is easily ignored, but love demonstrated is irresistible.

Imagine plunging your hand into a pot of boiling water – and leaving it there. Imagine a hot knife being thrust into your eye without being withdrawn. Imagine not being able to tolerate intense light or loud noises because of the pain each causes.

That’s a short list of the daily challenges Keith Orsini faces every day.

Orsini has what is called complex regional pain syndrome – aptly referred to as CRPS by acronym.

Symptoms of the condition began after Orsini was severely injured playing baseball. A freshman pitcher for his high school baseball team, Orsini was struck in the face by a line drive.

At the time, Orsini and his coach wanted him to shake it off and return to the game. His dad prevailed, however, and the young athlete went to the hospital.

“It broke my nose and shattered my cheek bone,” he said. “I lost sight in my left eye.”

That was in the spring of 1974.

Orsini said he began to experience sensitivity to light and sound almost immediately. He also complained of constant pain and touch sensitivity.

His doctors told his father that Orsini was drug-seeking or a complainer. His efforts to get medical help were frustrating, he said.

“Some people will tell you that God never gives you more than you can handle,” he said. “I don’t believe that. I always felt that God helps you turn things around.”

Orsini was not diagnosed with CRPS until 1993 – 19 years after his accident. He is 54 and has lived with his condition 35 years.

Turning things around

In 1995, Orsini’s family founded American RSDHope, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating the public about this little-recognized condition. The family did not want others to experience what Orsini had gone through in getting a diagnosis.

“At one time a patient with CRPS had to see around 10 doctors before getting a diagnosis,” he said. “Now, the average is three doctors.”

Their efforts were to reach physicians as well. Orsini said amputations of limbs occurred as a result of doctors thinking the pain would end with the removal of the painful site. The problem is CRPS can spread.

“You have someone whose leg or arm has been amputated to end the pain, only to still have pain – minus the limb,” Orsini said.

In addition to his mother, Lynne Orsini, Keith Orsini has a partner who works with him. They met in Florida as volunteers with the Humane Society. Anjanette Lee was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), similar to CRPS in that it is related to the nervous system. There the comparisons end, they both said.

Orsini and Lee are unable to work regular jobs and are relegated to disability incomes. But they find great solace in working with kindergartners at a local elementary school.

Asked if it isn’t painful for him when the children touch him, Orsini looked up with a slight smile.

“It is a great reminder to me that there are children who are not constantly suffering from pain,” he said.

Asked how he has coped all this time, Orsini is philosophic.

“You lose most of your friends when you have a chronic illness,” he said. “People don’t know. They are uncomfortable around you and don’t know what to say.”

He said CRPS has been called the suicide disease. Most don’t last as long as him.

Asked what he would like to happen in his life, he replied, “To be normal.”

________

Complex regional pain syndrome was formerly known as reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome (RSDS). It is a progressive disease with no known cure, Keith Orsini said. It attacks the sympathetic nervous system, which mobilizes the body’s nervous system through hormonal and stress response.

Between 1.5 and 3 million are affected, according to information provided by American RSDHope. While anyone can get the disease, women dominate the numbers at 75 percent.

Pain caused by CRPS is constant, extremely intense, and out of proportion to an injury. According to the McGill Pain Index, CRPS is the most painful chronic pain listed. It ranks above chronic back pain, childbirth and the amputation of a digit.

While patients do experience remission – the absence of symptoms – a simple stubbed toe can bring the onslaught back, Orsini said.

It was one of those situations you never think will happen to you, but you know it can. Harry Cole was the pastor of a Presbyterian church in Maryland. His wife Jacqueline suddenly had a stroke. This happens to hundreds of thousands of people a year, and many of them recover. But Jackie did not. Soon she lapsed into a deep coma. Her coma was so bad she had to be placed on a respirator.

What would you do in a situation like this? The Coles had talked it over years before and they both decided neither of them wanted to live on a machine. After she had been on the respirator 41 days, Rev. Cole went to a judge and asked that his wife’s machines be unplugged. But the judge wouldn’t do it. Back in 1986, the law gave him no guidelines in this kind of situation, so the judge refused to do anything. All Pastor Cole could do was sit by his wife. She wasn’t really alive, but neither was she dead. And he had no power to do anything about it.

It’s a terrible thing to be in a hopeless situation. Every direction you look, things seem bleak. And it seems like it will always be that way, it will never change. If you ever feel like this, keep one thing in mind - don’t forget God. The testimony of the Bible is that God can deliver us, he can lift us up, even when things seem totally hopeless.

Hopelessness is not an uncommon feeling. We all experience it at one time or another. We all have to face up to the fact that life is hard. And what is worse is that the hardness is not evenly distributed. Some people seem to get more than their share, and they don’t seem to deserve it. When life gets really bleak, we figure it’s always going to be that way. The pain is never going to go away. But if you believe in God, don’t count on it. He has a tendency to deliver us from unbearable situations. When you think there’s no reason to hope, think again.

Rev. Cole had asked the judge to unplug the life support systems from his wife Jackie. All four of their children agreed. In his mind she was as good as dead. She was just a vegetable. For some reason, the judge had refused. All Pastor Cole could do was wait for the inevitable.

He didn’t have to wait long. Six days later, his wife woke up. In his own words, he was shocked. He asked her if she was awake. She nodded yes. He asked her to smile. And she did. He kissed her and asked her to kiss back. She did that, too. She continued recovering for the past 3 months. Jackie has some memory loss, and her fingers are not coordinated. But she’s far from dead.

Most of us will never experience such a dramatic healing. But in any situation, things can get better. As David says in Psalm 30, verse 5, God’s anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.

[The source for this illustration is unknown, but probably was derived from the People magazine article below.]

=================

Related article from People magazine, Vol. 26, No. 15; October 13, 1986

http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20094743,00.html

“Her Family Was Ready to Pull the Plug — then Jackie Cole Suddenly Awakened from Her Coma”

by David Van Biema

Until last spring, Jacqueline Cole of Baltimore had always seemed to be one of those enviable people attended by a special grace. Beautiful, fit, creative and happy at 44, she was married to a handsome, popular Presbyterian minister, Harry Cole, and their four adopted children were moving smoothly into adulthood. She enjoyed a successful career in education, yet still found time to do aerobics daily and to bake pastry so good it was sold at one of the city’s finest restaurants.

In the last seven months, however, Jackie Cole has become a modern-day Lazarus. One day, in a matter of moments, a burst blood vessel in her brain plunged Cole into a condition so grave it was all but indistinguishable from death. Though thousands of people all over the world prayed for her recovery, her family eventually gave up hope and went to court for permission to take her off life support. Only six days after the judge announced he was withholding his consent, Jackie Cole suddenly returned to life.

Her ordeal began, of all times, on the day before Easter. “We were laughing, talking in the family room, home for the holiday,” recalls her son Tom, “and a headache came on her real suddenly.” As the pain increased, she lost all feeling in her left arm. “Oh, no,” she murmured, turning white, “I’m having a stroke.” An ambulance came quickly but by the time she arrived at Maryland General Hospital four minutes later, she had fallen into a deep coma. Only a respirator and a tangle of tubes kept her body alive.

Day after day, week after week, Cole’s family and friends determinedly sat with her, talked to her, stroked her and read to her without eliciting the slightest trace of reaction. They were not alone: As word of her condition spread through the Presbyterian community, prayer groups were alerted, then telephone-linked “prayer chains.” Within weeks, her name was on the lips of the faithful all over the world.

The prayers appeared to go unanswered. Cole’s condition, bad as it was, grew even worse. She developed double pneumonia, a collapsed lung, then a blood system infection. Still in a deep coma, she suffered a heart attack. The doctors said her chance of recovery was perhaps one in a million. They had a term for her condition: “a persistent vegetative state.”

Harry Cole, 43, faced a terrible decision. As a clergyman, he was all too familiar with the controversy over whether it wasn’t more humane to “pull the plug” on people in irreversible comas rather than prolong their nominal lives. He felt he knew his wife’s feelings on the subject. Jackie’s own mother had died a lingering, bitter death of brain cancer, and Jackie had resolved never to suffer a similar end. “We had no written agreements or deep mutual understanding about it,” says Harry, but “she made it clear that she would want only a full life.”

Harry consulted his children, friends and fellow theologians, and all agreed. The tubes and machines that were sustaining her body should be disconnected. “I tried hard to understand God’s will,” he remembers today. “It was time to let her go.”

To disconnect Jackie’s life support, the Coles had to petition the courts. Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge John Carroll Byrnes withheld his permission. Jackie’s brain-wave recordings, he pointed out, showed the merest ember of electrical activity. He decided the family should wait awhile longer. “It was not a difficult decision for me,” Byrnes says today. “She was not legally brain dead. I was dealing with a live person.”

The Coles, exhausted and devastated, had Jackie moved out of intensive care to a private room, where they continued to await the inevitable. Friends came to pay their last respects. It was John Evans’ turn last May 15, on the sixth day after the court hearing. Evans, a realtor, took the unconscious woman’s inert hand and said, “Hello.” To his astonishment, Jackie opened her eyes and smiled at him. Harry rushed weeping to her side and asked her if she was awake. When she nodded yes, he kissed her. Jackie kissed him back.

Since coming out of her six-week coma, Jackie has resumed speaking and reading, but she has had to learn to write with her left hand and to get around with a walker. She still has terrible problems with both long-and short-term memory. Each day, she records her activities in her “memory log,” in order to remember where she is in time and space. But she has the wit to joke about her plight. (“You want to know where my memory log is? I forgot!”) In about a month, she is expected to be able to go home permanently.

Jackie’s incredible journey has left Harry Cole by turns jubilant, puzzled and reverent. “I guess you could say we’ve muddied the waters surrounding the question of a person’s right to die,” he said. “If one of my parishioners came to me under similar circumstances and asked ‘Should I let the doctor pull the plug?’ I could not make the decision.” As for Jackie’s case, he thinks he understands what he has witnessed. “This is a miracle.”

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Related article from Time magazine, March 19, 1990

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,969616-9,00.html

"Ethics: Love and Let Die”

The Rev. Harry Cole, a Presbyterian minister who faced the dilemma when his wife fell into a coma, admits the complexity of pressures. “If she were to go on that way, our family faced not only the incredible pain of watching her vegetate, but we also faced harsh practical realities.” The cost of nursing-home care was likely to top $30,000 a year. “How could I continue to send three kids to college with the additional financial strain?”

The Cole case provides one more reason for courts to be careful about withdrawing life support: medicine is an uncertain science. When Cole’s wife Jackie suffered a massive brain hemorrhage four years ago, the blood vessels in her brain ruptured, and she fell into a coma. “The vast majority of patients who have this kind of stroke die within a few hours,” Dr. Tad Pula, the head of Maryland General Hospital’s division of neurology, told Cole. But Jackie did not die right away; after several crises she stabilized into a vegetative state, which doctors said could last indefinitely. After talking with his children, Cole went to court to remove the respirator. But Baltimore Circuit Court Judge John Carroll Byrnes stayed his decision. Six days later, Jackie Cole woke up.

Today Jackie and Harry still appear on the talk-show circuit. She suffers some short-term memory loss, but otherwise is fully recovered. “When I look back at what the doctors said, I think, ‘How wrong they were,’“ she says. “What happened to me was truly miraculous.” She does not blame Harry for wanting to pull the plug. “I know he loves me. I know he was never trying to do away with me.” But the story does highlight the dilemma both judges and family members face. “I thought my decision was well planned, well thought out, responsible,” says Cole. “It was what Jackie had asked me to do.”

=================

Ironically, the Cole family's experience led to Right-To-Die laws. See: “Couple’s Story Ironic; Brush With Death Led to Right-to-Die Stand,” by Kim Chappell, The Washington Post, April 19, 1990.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” writes Henry David Thoreau. “What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.”

I thought of these words as I was playing tourist this summer in my hometown near the shores of Lake Michigan. On a guided ride through the massive sand dunes of Silver Lake, we stopped at the highest point of the dunes. With lines he'd been using for years, our guide offered a few statistics as he pointed out the scenes around us. From the hill we could see the smaller lake and the big lake, a historic lighthouse, and the endless shifting dunes that slowly engulf the small forests around them. Most of his words were lost in the beauty of the scene itself, but I tuned in as he described the survival tactics of the birch trees beside us. “These trees,” he said, pointing to trees that were no more than 10 feet high, “are upwards of 35 feet tall.” They are trees assailed each year by shifting sands and changing hillsides. When their branches are enveloped by sand, leaves die from lack of sunlight, but the branches become roots.

I don't know why Thoreau's words hit me at that moment as I took in the clever tactics of a handful of scrappy trees. I was impressed with their display of life, their fight to survive in a world that kept smothering them. Perhaps it was their quiet perseverance in an uncertain world that drew a sharp contrast to my own behavior in stifling moments and changing winds. Looking out from that which overwhelms me, I am easily resigned to lightlessness.

In 1845 Henry David Thoreau left his pencil-manufacturing business and moved to the woods of Massachusetts. Walden is the lyrical record of the 26 months he spent in withdrawal from society in a cabin on the shore of Walden Pond. Written 150 years ago, many of his words still meet us as he hoped them to, like a “chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, to wake my neighbors up.” One of Thoreau's concerns was that the world was being dulled by the bombardment of an unending flow of news, and a fascination with trivial events. “We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas” he writes, “but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”

Standing atop the mountains of the information age, it doesn't take much to see the relevance of this concern. Turning on the news each day or jumping on the Internet to get the headlines, a task I do faithfully, I am ashamed at how easily I am taken in by stories that are less “news” and more gossip. But then even the stories that are certainly newsworthy can all too easily become a weight that buries me in fear, or engulfs me in a concern that, though real, is riddled with the possibility that I will miss the point. Though neither Thoreau nor I would contend that news consumption is bad, information abounds in overwhelming degrees. Each fact, each story, owns the potential to move our emotions like sand dunes, cutting us off from hope and light.

We live in a world of shifting uncertainties where the potential to resign ourselves to fear or hopelessness is real. In Psalm 1 we are reminded that the one is blessed whose certainty is the Lord, whose hope is in God's unchanging presence. “He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.” In this changing culture of disheartening headlines and distracting information, many lead lives of quiet desperation. Still many others grow roots where life buries branches.

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Copyright © 2004 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

[See interesting blog at the bottom]

An intriguing painting is on display in the Louvre in Paris. It portrays Faust (the legendary German magician who bartered away his soul to the devil) sitting across from Satan at a chessboard. Satan is gloating over what appears to be the checkmate of Faust's king. The magician's expression is that of a beaten man. According to an often told story, a famous chess master visited the gallery one day and studied the painting with great care. All at once he startled everyone around him by shouting excitedly, "It's a lie! It's a lie! The king and the knight have another move."

Isaiah assured the people of Judah that God always provides a way of escape. Although they would be deported to Babylon because of their sinfulness, Isaiah prophesied that a future day of release would come when they would have to leave hurriedly. But they wouldn't have to worry. Just as God had provided water for the Israelites in the desert, He would also provide for them on their long trek homeward. Many of us have experienced situations that appeared hopeless. We saw no way out, but we prayed and God opened a way. He made that "impossible" move. We can trust Him. He can never be checkmated. -Herb Vander Lugt When problems seem impossible And we can't face another day, The Lord extends His helping hand And shows us He can make a way. -Sper

God is the only King who can never be defeated.

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Version from Wit and Wisdom, 2/2/07:

Paul Murphy, an Irish-American, was in his day the world’s champion chess player. A friend of his once took him to see a painting in a famous art gallery, thinking he would be interested because of the subject. It depicted a young man staring in despair at a chessboard, while across the table sat the devil with a leering look as he watched the young man’s agony. The title explained it all: “Checkmated.”

Murphy gazed at the picture intently, studying every position of the chessmen; then suddenly he shouted, “Bring me a chessboard. I can save him yet!” His mastermind had noted one last move which could save the situation.

In the game of life Jesus Christ has a thousand ways to help us of which we know nothing. And that help can come at the time when we have reached the end of our resources and gaze in despair at the hopelessness of it all.

By R. W. Engstrom

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Source: These Times, Copyright (c) August 1959, Pacific Press, http://www.signstimes.com

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Another version by Wit & Wisdom (5/4/06), by Rev. Eric S. Ritz:

On display in the magnificent Louvre Museum in Paris, France, is that dramatic painting of Goethe's Faust. Faust is seated at a table engaged in a competitive game of chess. And at first glance, it looks like Faust is losing. His opponent in the chess game is Satan. The devil sits there grinning smugly. He thinks he has the victory in hand. He is pointing at the chessboard with an evil leer and he is gloating.

As you look at the painting, you can almost hear the devil shouting: “Checkmate! Game's over! I win!”

However, a person with a keen eye who knows the game of chess can see that the match is not over at all. As a matter of fact, just a few years ago, an internationally famous chess player was admiring the painting when all of a sudden he lunged forward and exclaimed: “Wait a minute! Look! Faust has another move and that move will give him the victory!”

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Blog by "Ryan" at http://everydayfaith.blogspot.com/2005/07/check.html; July 06, 2005:

CHECK

Last Wednesday, I helped do a funeral at St. Lukes. The departed was a long time member of the parish community, though she and her husband had been living in Michigan for several years now, I take it. Despite that, they wanted to have the funeral at St. Luke’s, so arrangements were made, and her Michigan priest came down here (from vacation actually) to preach and celebrate.

The woman who died was an avid art enthusiast, I learned after talking with her husband. It was therefore appropriate that during the sermon, the visiting priest told an anecdotal story featuring a piece of art to help make his point. I was very impressed with the tale and thought it really worked well in a funeral sermon, particularly for celebrating the life of an art lover.

The story went something like this:

In the National Gallery of London, there hangs a painting.

Depicted in the painting are two men sitting at a small table.

On the table is a chess board, and, if one looks closely enough,

one can see that the game is nearing its conclusion. On the far

side of the table, bigger than life, is an old man, head thrown

back in macabre laughter, smoking a cigar. On the near side of

the table is a young man, head held low in defeat. Some have

suggested that these two represent Mephistopheles and Faust. The

painting is entitled “Checkmate”. While on a school trip to the

gallery, a young man sat for almost the entire duration of the

field trip in front of this work, staring at it. When his

teachers came to collect him at the end, he stood up and shouted,

“It’s a lie! The king has one move left!” And, if you look at

the game, you will see that the young man is correct. It is not

checkmate after all.

As you can imagine, this worked very well in a funeral sermon. That which seems to be the end is not the end, because the king has one move left. The power of Jesus’ resurrection - defeating death - overcomes death’s checkmate maneuvers.

I liked it. In fact, I liked it so much that today, I decided I would love to see the actual picture. I wanted to see what it looked like and I also wanted to see if I could find the king’s one last move. So I did a google search. I came up with no images. I looked in art sites, at the National Gallery of London’s site, and at poster print sites. Nothing. What I did find though were lots of paintings called “Checkmate”, but not this one and tons of funeral sermons wherein this story had been used. So, the preacher wasn’t as clever or original as I had thought. That is disappointing enough. But, what I will really be disappointed about is if this painting doesn’t exist at all. That someone, once upon a time, invented this story and preachers have been lifting it ever since. That would be really disheartening. We’re celebrating the life of someone dear to us! How can we do that with a lie? If the preacher is unsure of the truth of the story, he should have looked it up as I did. Why would they not want to actually see this piece? Please, someone save the day and locate this art piece. Someone restore my faith in this preacher by pointing me to the piece, so I can see it with my own two eyes.

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The blog received this comment from “Jason”:

The story has probably been a little changed through the years, but I think it is in reference to the chess player Paul Morphy during one of his tournaments in England. The painter is a German man by the name of Moritz August Retzsch and the title of the painting is Die Schachspieler.

The story is that Paul Morphy, the tournament champion, set-up a board in like manor to the painting and played the white to victory over the opponent (the devil). So don’t lose faith in your preacher. There is truth to the story.

One of the world’s favorite comedians took his own life. It makes me very sad. But it also makes me determined to get the word out about clinical depression.

By now, you’ve probably heard about the shocking suicide of comedian and Oscar-winning actor Robin Williams.

Shocking, but if you know anything about suicide and Williams’ personal history, not entirely a surprise. Williams had been open about his problems with alcohol and drugs. What’s more, Williams had been, according to his publicist, “battling ‘severe depression.’”

Alcohol, drugs, depression, all of these are associated with suicide. And as psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison of Johns Hopkins writes in her book, “Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide,” the most common factor in suicide is mental illness, in particular “mood disorders” such as clinical depression and bipolar disorder.

Now, as somebody who has suffered from this myself over the years, I have to say it’s very important to be clear about what doctors mean by clinical depression. It is not being sad, even for extended periods of time. Sadness is part of the human condition. But clinical depression is a medical condition “which paralyzes all the otherwise vital forces that make us human,” leaving us with a life that is “bloodless” and “painless.”

In his book, “The Noonday Demon,” which chronicled his life with severe clinical depression, Andrew Solomon has written that the opposite of depression isn’t happiness, it’s vitality.

And as Jamison tells us, the presence of mood disorders not only makes it more likely that a person will attempt suicide, but also will incline them towards more “serious” efforts in that direction — that is, efforts that exhibit more forethought and planning.

Depressed people often self-medicate with alcohol and drugs, which, according to Jamison, “more often worsen [the pain]” and “undermine the individual’s willingness to seek out and receive good clinical care.” They also reduce inhibitions and increase risk-taking, thus reinforcing whatever tendencies toward self-destruction a person may possess.

A friend of mine told me that several times he’d seen Robin Williams attending Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City. Apparently Williams was looking for answers. Maybe he found them, and maybe he didn’t; but we serve a merciful God whose thoughts and ways are not our own.

I say this because tragic events over the past few years have reminded us that Christians are not immune to the scourge of suicide. Outstanding Christians such as Tony Dungy and Rick Warren have lost sons to suicide. As Warren and his wife, Kay, told Piers Morgan of CNN, they had talked their son Matthew off the proverbial ledge many times in his tragically-short life.

Like most of those left behind in the wake of suicide, they wondered if there was anything more they could have done, and concluded that the answer was “no.” As Warren told Morgan “If love could have kept my child alive, he’d be alive today, because he was incredibly loved.”

In the wake of Matthew Warren’s suicide, discussion about how churches deal with depression intensified. Christian leaders wrote about their own struggles with depression. And let me add my name and that of the colleague who helped me prepare this BreakPoint commentary to the list of those who struggle with depression.

If you or anyone you love suffers from depression, please get help. You can come to BreakPoint.org and click on this commentary and we’ll direct you to resources that can help.

Why some people ultimately succumb to what Christianity Today writer C. Michael Patton called “the asphyxiation of hope” and others don’t is something we just don’t know.

What we do know is that Christians are called to walk alongside those who suffer.

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Copyright © 2014 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.