70 Sermon Illustrations on Comfort

At 40, Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who never married and had no children, was walking through a park one day in Berlin when he met a girl who was crying because she had lost her favorite doll. She and Kafka searched for the doll unsuccessfully.

Kafka told her to meet him there the next day and they would come back to look for her.

The next day, when they had not yet found the doll, Kafka gave the girl a letter “written” by the doll saying “please don’t cry. I took a trip to see the world. I will write to you about my adventures.”

Thus began a story which continued until the end of Kafka’s life.

During their meetings, Kafka read the letters of the doll carefully written with adventures and conversations that the girl found adorable.

Finally, Kafka brought back the doll (he bought one) that had returned to Berlin.

“It doesn’t look like my doll at all,” said the girl.

Kafka handed her another letter in which the doll wrote: “my travels have changed me.” The little girl hugged the new doll and brought the doll with her to her happy home.

A year later Kafka died.

Many years later, the now-adult girl found a letter inside the doll. In the tiny letter signed by Kafka it was written:

“Everything you love will probably be lost, but in the end, love will return in another way.”

________

The Snopes website has investigatede the story and says all the details cannot be proven but elements of it can be backed up:

For many of us, our first impulse with the terminally ill is to avoid them. It's not that we don't care; it's that we don't know what to do or say. Here are some ways to serve the dying:

1. Encourage reminiscing.

2. Offer to pray out loud.

3. Stand by them.

4. Bring goodies.

5. Be real.

6. Touch them.

7. Read the Bible.

Almost five years to the day that Roger Clay died in a motorcycle accident, his parents got one last message from him - a sun-scorched note he had stuffed in a bottle as a child and set adrift in 1984.

A man found the bottle in a St. Petersburg canal on the Fourth of July and returned it this week to Clay's mother.

“I dread this time of year every year. It's the worst,” Lisa Ferguson told the St. Petersburg Times for Thursday's editions. “But now I have something wonderful to think about.”

Clay died July 10, 1998, nine days after his 21st birthday.

He had been 7 years old and on vacation when he tossed the tape-sealed Pepsi bottle into the Gulf of Mexico from a pier in Clearwater, just north of St. Petersburg.

“To whoever finds this letter please write me a letter and let me know,” the note said in shaky pencil. The note included his address in Fairfield, Ohio, and the date: Dec. 27, 1984.

When the bottle turned up behind Don Smith's home on Tampa Bay, on the opposite side of the Pinellas County peninsula, Smith set out to find the boy. With the Times' help, he learned of Clay's death.

Smith said he was determined to find the parents. “Imagine what that message would mean to them,” he said.

Ferguson was tracked down on vacation in Seminole, a St. Petersburg suburb.

“Here I am, trying to escape Roger's death, and he reaches out and gives me this message, this gift,” she said.

Clay's father, Roger K. Clay, said he had forgotten all about the bottle.

“It's kind of hard to put into words, all the emotions that brings back,” he said. “I told Lisa, it was like he was trying to remind us he was still with us.”

Nothing in the early life of James Cash Penney indicated that his name would one day become a household word in homes across the United States. Born in 1875, he grew up on a small farm in Kentucky. His father was a minister in the Primitive Baptist Church. Both parents were committed Christians who instilled a deep and abiding faith in their children.

While Penney was a teenager his minister father became the victim of church politics and was removed from his position. The ensuing financial hardship for the family meant that Penney had to leave school, taking a job to help support the family. He began to work as a clerk in a local store. Although he didn’t realize it at the time, this modest start was providential and would propel him into an illustrious career as a retailer.

After working in various stores, Penney was able to purchase a one-third interest in a dry goods store in Kemmerer, Wyoming. The date was April 14, 1902. Kemmerer was a small mining town of less than 1,000 people. Penney and his wife lived in a tiny attic apartment above the store. Their furniture consisted of a large empty dry goods box for a table and smaller boxes for chairs. When their first child was born, Penney’s young wife wrapped their infant in a blanket, allowing it to sleep under a counter while she stood beside it, working alongside her husband, serving their customers.

From that humble beginning J. C. Penney would eventually preside over 1,700 stores. He would lead the country’s largest chain of department stores, each one bearing his name. The influence of Penney’s godly parents became evident with the growth of his business, as he began to describe his chain as the Golden Rule Stores, based on the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:12: “Do for others what you would like them to do for you” (NLT).

Although his enterprise made him incredibly wealthy, Penney’s life was not devoid of setbacks and troubles. In fact, beginning in 1929, events took place that nearly cost Penney his life.

When the Great Depression struck the country, it came at a time of great financial vulnerability for Penney. While his stores continued to do well, Penney had been adding outside interests, and these were proving to be extremely costly. In order to finance these interests, Penney borrowed heavily. In addition, Penney was becoming a major philanthropist, giving generously to organizations and individuals. The Depression prompted banks to request repayment of his loans sooner than anticipated. Suddenly cash flow was tight, and Penney was finding it difficult to meet payment schedules. Constant and unrelenting worry began to take a toll. “I was so harassed with worries that I couldn’t sleep, and developed an extremely painful ailment,” he said.

Concerned about his deteriorating health, Penney checked himself into the Kellogg sanitarium at Battle Creek, Michigan, the Mayo Clinic of its era. There, Dr. Elmer Eggleston, a staff physician, examined Penney, declaring that he was extremely ill. “A rigid treatment was prescribed, but nothing helped,” Penney recalled. He was attacked by the twin demons of hopelessness and despair. His very will to live was rapidly eroding. “I got weaker day by day. I was broken nervously and physically, filled with despair, unable to see even a ray of hope. I had nothing to live for, I felt that I hadn’t a friend left in the world, that even my family had turned against me.”

Alarmed by his rapidly deteriorating condition, Dr. Eggleston gave Penney a sedative. However, the effect quickly wore off, and Penney awakened with the conviction that he was living the last night of his life. “Getting out of bed, I wrote farewell letters to my wife and to my son, saying that I did not expect to live to see the dawn.”

Penney awakened the next morning, surprised to find himself alive. Making his way down the hallway of the hospital, he could hear singing coming from the little chapel where devotional exercises were held each morning. The words of the hymn he heard being sung spoke deeply to his condition. Going into the chapel, he listened with a weary heart to the singing, the reading of the Scripture lesson, and the prayer. “Suddenly something happened,” he recalled. “I can’t explain it. I can only call it a miracle. I felt as if I had been instantly lifted out of the darkness of a dungeon into a warm, brilliant sunlight. I felt as if I had been transported from hell to Paradise. I felt the power of God as I had never felt it before.”

In a life-transforming instant Penney knew that God, with His love, was there to help. “From that day to this, my life has been free from worry,” he declared. “The most dramatic and glorious 20 minutes of my life were those I spent in that chapel that morning.” The words from the hymn that spoke so eloquently and miraculously to J. C. Penney were “God will take care of you.”

The hymn God used to save J. C. Penney’s life was written by Civilla Durfee Martin. Not much is known about the hymn writer. She lived between 1866 and 1948, writing the hymn in 1904. The inspiration for the words may have come from 1 Peter 5:7: “Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about what happens to you” (NLT). The opening lines read:

Be not dismayed whate’er betide,

God will take care of you;

Beneath His wings of love abide,

God will take care of you.

God will take care of you,

Through every day, o’er all the way;

He will take care of you,

God will take care of you.

________

By Victor M. Parachin, a minister and freelance writer who lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Source: Adventist Review, ISSN 0161-1119, (c) January 24, 2002, http://www.adventistreview.org/

Your goal should be to become a gentle, loving, and tender husband who does not lecture. Lectures during stressful times only create more stress. This was a new concept to me because I wasn't fortunate enough to have a father who knew how to be tender to his wife. I wasn't aware of my wife's needs for tenderness until a few years ago. No one had ever told me that one of a woman's greatest needs is tenderness and a husband who will listen instead of lecture, and even if someone had, I don't think I would have understood. (I should have been able to figure it out, though, because when I am down, I like people to be gentle and comforting to me.)

I'll never forget what one woman told me: “If my husband would only put his arms around me and hold me, without lecturing me, when I am feeling blue!” But lecture #734 would begin as he told her she would feel better if she took an aspirin...if she were more organized...if she wouldn't wear her self down so much...if she would discipline the children better....

“Have you ever told him what you need?” I asked.

“Are you kidding? I'd be embarrassed,” she laughed. “Come on, you're kidding.”

“No. He probably doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know you need to be held instead of lectured. Why don't you tell him during a calm conversation some day?”

“That does kind of make sense to me. A lot of times when I am down and crying and all upset, he'll ask, 'What do you want me to do?’ I just flare up and say, 'If I have to tell you what to do, it would wreck the whole idea.'“

As a husband, I recommend that you ask your wife when and how you need to hold her when she needs to be comforted. Ask her what circumstances prompt her to seek your gentle caring arms and touch. You can't dream them up on your own. We just can't perceive the deep feelings of other people. We've got to draw them out and then practice, practice, practice the skills of meeting our wives' needs.

The first time I ever tried to ski, I rode a rope pulley to the top of a small hill. The hill looked a lot bigger from the top than it did from the bottom.

I thought, no way am I gonna go down this hill. So I sat down on the back of my skis and scooted all the way down.

Even if you have to scoot instead of ski your way through the skills in this chapter at first, remember that you'll eventually be able to get to your feet. This book is certainly not an exhaustive marriage manual, but it is a start. Believe me, if you practice what is written here, you and your wife can have a more loving marriage.

When I was first learning the art of comforting my wife, we had an experience that took every ounce of self-control I could muster. But I came through a stronger man, encouraged by my new-found strength. I want you to imagine yourself in my situation. How would you have reacted?

I had bought a dumpy-looking boat for $400 because we wanted to do more things together as a family. That same night my son and I decided to take it for a quick trip to the lake, only five minutes from our house, just to see how it ran. Because of my inexperience as a boater, the wind blew the boat back to the bank the first time I put it in. I got wet and frustrated trying to push it out again. After an irritating ten minutes trying to start the cantankerous thing, the boat wouldn't go faster than ten miles an hour. Something was obviously wrong. I was quite a way from the shore before I realized I had better get back in case the motor stalled.

Then? “Dad, the boat's sinking!” Greg cried. I looked behind me and saw the foot of water that had gurgled in. The previous owner had taken the plug out the last time it had rained but had forgotten to tell me. With the hull full of water, I couldn't find the hole for the plug. Luckily we didn't sink. I put the boat back on the trailer, determined to take it back first thing in the morning. I was a little embarrassed to have the dumpy-looking thing parked in front of my house anyway.

A boat dealer told me it would take $150 to fix the engine's broken seal, so I returned it to the owner who had promised me I could have my money back if I didn't like it.

When I left home early that morning, I had agreed to be back by eleven o'clock so Norma could go shopping. Retrieving my money took longer than I had planned, and I arrived home an hour-and-a-half late. In the meantime, Norma had decided to take our minimotor home to the grocery store. Trying to turn it around in the driveway, she accidentally drove too close to the house and sheared off a section of the roof. As the roof fell, it put a huge dent in the front of the motor home.

When I pulled into the drive at 12:30, I saw part of the roof lying in the driveway next to the dented motor home. I just laughed out loud, more out of desperation than humor.

I wanted to say to my wife, “Oh, no, $500 at least to fix this. Where did you get your driver's license, at a garage sale?” I wanted to lecture her angrily and then ignore her for a while.

For once, I remembered what I was supposed to do. I told myself, “Keep your mouth shut and put your arms around her. Just hold her. Don't say anything, okay?”

However, my basic human nature told me, “Give her a lecture. Let our anger out. Express it.”

My mind finally triumphed over my will. I put my arms around her and said gently, “You must feel terrible, don't you?” Even though war was still raging inside me. We went into the house and sat on the couch. I let her talk her feelings out.

I held her, and after a couple of minutes I felt good because I could feel the tenderness begin to flow from me. Soon I was fine, and she was encouraged. Minutes later, a carpenter friend drove up who had already heard about the accident. We had the roof patched and painted in two hours.

It felt good not to be angry for once. I hadn't offended my wife, shouted at the kids, or diminished any of the beauty of our relationship. I could have reverted to my old excuse, “Well, I just can't keep from blowing up.” Instead, I had one of those encouraging victories.

My new-found sensitivity has been tested on several occasions. Once I almost blew it on a fishing trip. I normally become completely oblivious to my family and the world when I'm near a stream, totally “submerging” myself in the exhilarating environment of fishing: the smell of the air, the tension when a fish strikes, the sound of the stream. Oops! Back to the story.

When we pulled up in our minimotor home beside a beautiful steam, my heart was pounding. I could hardly wait to get my reel rigged up. First, I rigged the kids' reels and told them, “Look, if you get tangled up, you're on your own.” (I used to get so frustrated when I was trying to fish and they were yelling, “Dad, I can't get this reeled in.” I wanted to devote my entire energy to fishing on my own.)

I found the perfect spot: a nice deep hole in a pool in front of a big boulder. I threw in the lure and let it wander naturally to the bottom of the pool. It swirled around and wham! I got my first trout! I had nearly caught the limit when Greg came running up. I was sure he was about to jump into the stream and spook the fish. I was already upset and angry from his interruption when he said, “Dad! Kari broke her leg!”

Kari broke her leg! What a time to break her leg! I couldn't believe she would do this to me. It was hard for me to leave, but I gave the line to Greg and said, “Don't break it. Don't get it tangled up. Just keep it in there.” I ran in Kari's direction, avoiding the big pool. After all, I didn't want to scare the fish.

Downstream, Kari was crying. “Daddy, I think I broke my leg.”

When I looked at it, I realized it was only bruised.

“Don't touch it,” I said. “It's not broken, it's just bruised. Put your leg in this cold water to soak for a few minutes.”

I'm really embarrassed to tell the rest of the story, but maybe you can learn from my insensitivity. I ran back to the fishing hole and caught a few more trout before walking back to where Kari was crying. “Dad, this water is cold.”

I rather roughly got her up to walk, but she couldn't. When I tried to hoist her up on the bank and couldn't, she started crying again and said, “Dad, you're so rough with me. Can't you be tender?” Something flashed when she said that word. It reminded me of all the times my wife and other women have told me, “What we need is tenderness and gentleness, not harshness. We don't need lectures.” And I couldn't even be tender with my eleven-year-old daughter. I had already lectured Kari because I felt she was interrupting my day. “Why didn't you look first?” I had asked her.

Just who was more important anyway? Those trout or my precious daughter? It was hard for me to face, but those trout had been more important to me. I had let fishing and my own desire endanger my only daughter. I was wrong, and I should have known better!

When I came to my senses, I hung my head low and said, “Kari, I've been so wrong to be harsh with you. I really feel bad. Will you forgive me?”

“Yeah, I'll forgive you, Dad.”

“Kari, you are more important to me than any fish, and I want you to know that. I was so carried away by this activity today that I really hurt you, didn't I?”

We just held each other for a while, and then she looked up into my eyes and asked gently, “Dad, did you use deodorant today?”

*

[Original illustration at this number was added to HolwickID #5020]

G.K. Chesterton called Charles Dickens the poet of fog.[1] In A Christmas Carol, the fog of London serves as a backdrop from which characters emerge with lamps, light.

When Scrooge is first greeted by the caroling of “God bless you merry gentlemen,” he responds such that “the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog.”[2]

Of the fog in Dickens, Chesterton remarks that fog is not used as dismal or dark, but rather something that draws in and, in the case of Scrooge, corners. Fog “makes the world small, in the same spirit as in that common and happy cry that the world is small, meaning it is full of friends.”[3] The fog of London brings Scrooge messengers and eventually sees him return to friends.

In this sense Chesterton picks up on the theme of comfort in Dickens. For comfort, he says, “belongs peculiarly to Christmas; above all it belongs pre-eminently to Dickens.”[4] The fog draws Scrooge inward to a place of comfort. For inside there are fires and feasts. Chesterton explains:

“The beauty and the real blessing of the story do not lie in the mechanical plot of it, the repentance of Scrooge, probable or improbable; they lie in the great furnace of real happiness that glows through Scrooge and everything round him.”[5]

In our day, we live in a fog. Current events and the conflict of culture pervade our streets and the airwaves in which we live and move. Yet, often when burdened by this fog and darkness we fail to see it as a reminder to move us to places of comfort. Places with fires and friends. Places that arrive naturally at this time of year.

George McDonald said Christmas Day is the “one day that blesses all the year.”[6] This is because at the heart of Christmas day is a message of comfort. Sung and proclaimed is a declaration of kingly coronation, the heralding of a kingdom that brings “tidings of comfort and joy.”

The promise of a Messiah-King came in a blessing from the patriarch Jacob to Judah that through him a king will reign (Genesis 49:10). Chris Bruno explains, “It was into this broken family line that God promised the scepter of kingship, the ruler’s staff. But the descendant of Judah would not only be the king of Israel, he would also be a king over the nations.”[7]

After hundreds of years, the people of God saw part of this prophecy fulfilled with the rise of King David about whom the prophet Nathan declares that the Lord “will establish the throne of his kingdom forever” (2 Samuel 7:13). Yet, this ruler revealed only, in part, what was yet still to come.

As Andreas Köstenberger reminds, “The Old Testament ends with the messianic promise unfulfilled,” and “The entire New Testament begins with a verse that declares Jesus to be the Son of David, the Son of Abraham, the long awaited Messiah!”(Matthew 1:1)[8]

Thus, when the angel of the Lord brought to the shepherds the “good tidings of great joy,” (Luke 2:10), they were marking the end of years of intertestamental silence about the coming messiah. Into the darkness of night emerged a lamp, a light. Jesus Christ came as King and reigns as King.

Pontius Pilate would ask Jesus about his monarchy and Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world — to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37).

This life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is what J.I. Packer calls the message of Christmas:

“The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity–hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory–because at the Father’s will Jesus Christ became poor and was born in a stable so that thirty years later he might hang on a cross. It is the most wonderful message the world has ever heard or will hear.”[9]

As a commentary for early Christians to understand this further, the author of the biblical letter to the Hebrews would connect the Old Testament prophecy about the Messiah-King to Jesus explaining that God the Father said of God the Son, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom” (Hebrews 1:8, Psalm 45:6).

And John declares Jesus is “the ruler of kings on earth” (Revelation 1:5). In our day, he rules at the right hand of the Father (Ephesians 1:20-23) though we do yet see “everything in subjection to him” (Hebrews 2:8).

Yet, though already reigning King, Jesus will come again to rule and reign in full. Into our world of darkness of fog, he will return and dwell with us and reign over us. Then “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

Just as Dickens used fog as a backdrop in which to drive Scrooge to light, friends, comfort — God uses the fog of darkness in our own day for good. Indeed, Chesterton’s final description of Dickens’ work serves as a fitting description of our own day, and our own future in Christ:

“The story sings from end to end like a happy man going home; and, like a happy and good man, when it cannot sing it yells. It is lyric and exclamatory, from the first exclamatory words of it. It is strictly a Christmas Carol.”[10]

The story of the reigning and returning Messiah-King, our Lord Jesus Christ is the Christmas Carol. May this bring tidings of comfort and joy, into the fog, this Christmas.

__________

[1] G.K. Chesterson, Charles Dickens: A Critical Study (Dodd Mead, 1910), 169.

[2] Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (Puffin, 1843 [2014]), 13.

[3] Chesterton, Charles Dickens, 168-169.

[4] Chesterton, Charles Dickens, 165.

[5] Chesterton, Charles Dickens, 173.

[6] George MacDonald, Within and Without (Scribner, 1872), 125 cited in Timothy Larsen, George MacDonald and the Age of Miracles (IVP, 2018), 21.

[7] Chris Bruno, The Whole Story of the Bible in 16 Verses (Crossway, 2015), 52.

[8] Andreas J. Kӧstenberger and Alexander E. Stewart, The First Days of Jesus (Crossway, 2015), 38-39.

[9] J.I. Packer, “The Son’s Gift,” in Knowing God Through the Year (Hodder, 2017), 29.

[10] Chesterton, Charles Dickens, 173.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared at The Gospel Coalition.

So often when we say, “She is such an encouragement,” we mean, “She makes me feel good.” True biblical encouragement goes much further than that. It means putting courage into another person.

Encouragement is a key function of a discipler. All of us need people in our lives who will instill courage so we can walk faithfully with our God. The following questions can help you evaluate how well you are bringing encouragement to those you disciple. Each is based on a verse containing the Greek word PARAKALEO, a word often translated “encouragement.”

• Do I think through creative ways to motivate righteous behavior in those I disciple? (Heb. 10:24–25)

• Do I make it a daily exercise to give encouragement as a preventative against the deceitfulness of sin? (Heb. 3:13)

• Do my words strengthen people to remain true to the faith? (Acts 14:21–22, 15:32)

• Do I honestly and earnestly express my desire to spend time with those I disciple? (Acts 28:20)

• Do I see emotional pain in others as something to be “comforted away,” or do I recognize the need to let people mourn over sin so they can experience God’s comfort and encouragement? (Matt. 5:4)

• Do I emphasize the mercies of God as the reason for responding to Him? (Romans 12:1)

• Do I express the urgency of my own need for prayer? (Romans 15:30)

• Do I forgive those I disciple, affirming my love for them but also communicating that they should “go and sin no more”? (2 Cor. 2:7)

• Am I willing to let others encourage me and “my” disciple? (2 Cor. 7:6–7)

• Am I helping the people I disciple to follow through on their commitments? (2 Cor. 9:5)

• Do I urge those I disciple to live in peace? (2 Cor. 13:11)

• Do my words emphasize that the purpose of God’s comfort is to equip us to comfort others? (2 Cor. 1:3–5)

________

Used by permission of DISCIPLESHIP JOURNAL™. Copyright © 1981-2006, The Navigators. Used by permission of NavPress. All Rights Reserved.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #5304]

Few Christian thinkers today write with the penetration and boldness of Philip Yancey. His experience contemplating a beautiful young bride suddenly devastated by a fatal illness [brings up many important issues].

Claudia, a beautiful young bride only a year into a glorious marriage, is now suddenly confined to a hospital bed, her beauty rapidly fading, her body sinking into unexpected and yet certain death from Hodgkin's disease.

This we hear from Philip Yancey. But his (true) story only begins there.

Now six kinds of visitors show up.

One is a deacon. He solemnly and earnestly "reminds" Claudia that our God would not "do such a thing to her" unless He had some good reason, unless there was some sin, some lesson for her to learn. Search for that in faith, he said. But, in her weakness she could not think of anything she had done wrong. And, anyway, why such a violent punishment?

Another visitor is an ebullient, cheerful woman. She arrives with flowers and flowery words to cheer. She insists on changing the subject every time Claudia refers to her illness. She overflows with exciting stories. She does not come back. She has done her duty.

Another woman arrives with great confidence in the power of faith. When she learns about the first visitor, she reacts instantly with, "Sickness is never God's will! Haven't you read the Bible? The devil stalks like a roaring lion, but God will deliver you if you can muster up enough faith to believe you will be healed Simply name your promise, in faith, and then claim the victory." Claudia was exhausted and confused.

A fourth visitor "brought along some books about praising God for everything that happens." This very spiritual woman told Claudia, "You need to come to the place where you can say, 'God, I love you for making me suffer like this.'" This repulsed Claudia. Is God really like that? What kind of glory of God is that?

On and on. You must get Yancey's book -- Where Is God When It Hurts (Zondervan, 1990).

This is not just an intellectual problem. It has a great deal to do with Who and how we worship.

What is the connection between worship and a day-by-day deeper awareness of the true glory of God? If worship hinges on our sense of His "worth-ship" we can't go on singing again and again "Majesty, Worship His Majesty" and expect the mere repetition of those words alone to deepen our awareness of His Glory. Jack Hayford did not write that magnificent song so much to gain or procure a sense of God's majesty as to express his awareness of it -- and to allow us to do so along with him.

But the power of his marvelous song hinges on the degree of whatever true sense we have, what true awareness we have, of God's majesty. Otherwise those words can become no more than a Hindu mantra.

Thus, if our awareness of God's glory is confused or distorted by the puzzling issues of Claudia's visitors, our worship is going to be limited to our actual experience of that glory.

Yet we commonly hear people wondering out loud why would God have "done" this or that dastardly deed, as though there is no other power working to tear down His Glory.

I would not give you a dime for the idea that God's sovereignty is limited by His "inability" to know what choices His created beings will make in the future, or the reverse extreme that nothing really happens that is dead wrong or truly evil. Apparently a handful of "openness" theologians are being accused of the first extreme. And Christianity Today (April 23, p. 103) gives a whole page to let us hear them stoutly deny this.

But I would give you far more than a dime to know more about that "other" person in this world whose sole occupation is incessantly to pervert and despoil God's goodness and creation, and to twist our understanding of what in this world God does or doesn't do.

Yancey is right to bring this puzzle before us. Why are our usual hospital "visitors" so confused about the virtually omnipresent pain, suffering, premature death, and the myriad examples in our world of the distortion of God's intent -- in a word, evil? Or, why are we so illiterate -- so seldom discussing -- what precisely are "the works of the devil" which "the Son of God appeared to destroy" (1 John 3:8)?

As a matter of fact, how in this world of universal pain and violence, can anyone for a moment question the existence of a Satanic campaign to reduce and distort the true glory of God? How can we be content if we do not learn more of the details and how to fight back? [...]

How long will our pre-scientific theologies allow us to go on believing naively that if we will just "live right" and "eat the right thing" that we will not succumb to any of the virulent viruses, bacteria, parasites, and many other violences that pervade our sad world?

In other words, what may well be "all to the good" is definitely not always good enough. Urging sick and dying people to "praise the Lord" becomes much more inspirational if we and they understand that our faithful God is not only mindful of the nature of evil but He is, with our help, in the process of conquering it. Only in that process of conquest can the full meaning be glimpsed in John's brief statement that "the Son of God appeared for this purpose that He might destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8)."

We can ask, "Where were our theologians when one of the most outstanding theologians of all time, Jonathan Edwards, sought -- against theological opposition -- to do away with smallpox?" Massachusetts pastors back then condemned him for "interfering with Divine Providence." What kind of Satan-favoring, God-distorting theology is that?

Why did it take another 200 years for any concerted effort to eliminate smallpox from the face of the earth? And why, when it did happen, was it not any kind of direct result of Christian initiative?

Can we not better worship and glorify a God who is pleased by the ending of the horrible annual toll of two million people dying by smallpox, that most terrible of all deaths?

Why is our mission to this evil-ridden world not more strategically obedient to God's concern to triumph over that evil? Maybe it is, as my pastor (Gordon Kirk, Lake Avenue Church, Pasadena) put it, "Satan's greatest achievement is to cover his tracks."

What happens to the quality of our worship if we only go around the world making plain by "actions that speak louder than words" that the God we worship is able merely to offer malarial ridden sufferers a bed on which to die? Does this not mean He does not know or care, or even with our help is unable to do anything, to eliminate malaria once and for all?

Or, does it not affect our worship if we worship a God that does not ask us to do anything about the fact that four children die every sixty seconds from the work of that devious, ingenious, metamorphosing parasite called malaria? At the minimum, are we not shouting to the world that the God we worship has not enlisted us on His side in this endeavor?

Don't blame Calvin. He did not have the faintest idea about germs and he only faintly understood the evil intelligence embodied in the masses of parasites that inflict us. With greater knowledge comes new responsibility.

And, worse by far, it may very well be that Calvin, along with Thomas Aquinas, Luther, etc., were infected by an Augustinian pagan syncretism from neo-Platonism that conceived of God as actually orchestrating evil for good -- not after the fact, but in its very initiation! The idea is, we must not fight evil but simply resign ourselves to it, knowing that a good God would never have anything but good in mind for us in "doing these harmful things to us."

How much more logical to believe what the Bible clearly assures us, that God is able to use for good -- and with our help ultimately triumph over -- the evil deeds of Satan after they happen, but that He does not guide Satan or "put him up to" evil.

I personally don't put great stock in mere philosophizing, but I am very concerned that so very, very little of the vast energies of the world's millions upon millions of followers of Christ are so marginal and distantly related to the major matter of eliminatable evil. And I believe that to many intelligent observers of Christianity our integrity and credibility are at stake.

In His presence there is comfort,

In His presence, there is peace.

When we seek the Father's heart

We will find such blessed assurance,

In the presence of the Lord.

In Thy presence there is comfort,

In Thy presence there is peace.

When we seek to know Thy heart

We will find such blessed assurance,

In Thy holy presence, Lord.

Almost five years to the day that Roger Clay died in a motorcycle accident, his parents got one last message from him - a sun-scorched note he had stuffed in a bottle as a child and set adrift in 1984.

A man found the bottle in a St. Petersburg canal on the Fourth of July and returned it this week to Clay's mother.

“I dread this time of year every year. It's the worst,” Lisa Ferguson told the St. Petersburg Times for Thursday's editions. “But now I have something wonderful to think about.”

Clay died July 10, 1998, nine days after his 21st birthday.

He had been 7 years old and on vacation when he tossed the tape-sealed Pepsi bottle into the Gulf of Mexico from a pier in Clearwater, just north of St. Petersburg.

“To whoever finds this letter please write me a letter and let me know,” the note said in shaky pencil. The note included his address in Fairfield, Ohio, and the date: Dec. 27, 1984.

When the bottle turned up behind Don Smith's home on Tampa Bay, on the opposite side of the Pinellas County peninsula, Smith set out to find the boy. With the Times' help, he learned of Clay's death.

Smith said he was determined to find the parents. “Imagine what that message would mean to them,” he said.

Ferguson was tracked down on vacation in Seminole, a St. Petersburg suburb.

“Here I am, trying to escape Roger's death, and he reaches out and gives me this message, this gift,” she said.

Clay's father, Roger K. Clay, said he had forgotten all about the bottle.

“It's kind of hard to put into words, all the emotions that brings back,” he said. “I told Lisa, it was like he was trying to remind us he was still with us.”