The Sweetness in Suffering
Speaker Notes
The First Letter of Peter 1:6-7; 4:12-13
6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
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12 Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.
“Sufferings will be sweet and pleasant to us while we are with Him; and the greatest pleasures will be, without Him, a cruel punishment to us.”
Brother Lawrence The Practice of the Presence of God page 34
Dorothy Sayers Letters to a Diminished Church quote (chapter 2, page 12)
The creative will presses on to its end, regardless of what it may suffer by the way. It does not choose suffering, but it will not avoid it, and must expect it. We say that it is love, and sacrifices itself for what it loves; and this is true, provided we understand what we mean by sacrifice. Sacrifice is what it looks like to other people, but to that-which-loves I think it does not appear so. When one really cares, the self is forgotten, and the sacrifice becomes only a part of the activity. Ask yourself: if there is something you supremely want to do, do you count as self-sacrifice the difficulties encountered or the other possible activities cast aside? You do not. The time when you deliberately say, “I must sacrifice this, that, or the other” is when you do not supremely desire the end in view. At such times you are doing your duty, and that is admirable, but it is not love. But as soon as your duty becomes your love the self-sacrifice is taken for granted, and, whatever the world calls it, you call it so no longer.
“Comfort yourself with Him who holds you fastened to the cross. He will loose you when He thinks fit.”
Brother Lawrence The Practice of the Presence of God page 39
“I wish you could convince yourself that God is often (in some sense) nearer to us, and more effectually present with us, in sickness than in health.”
Brother Lawrence The Practice of the Presence of God page 39
Peter Kreeft, Ph.D., is a professor of philosophy at Boston College wikipedia personal website