analogies on Difficulties

An American businessman went to Oberammergau to witness the famous passion play, just before the outbreak of World War II. Enthralled by this great drama that depicts the story of the cross, he went b...

When someone promises us something wonderful, we can hardly wait for that promise to be fulfilled. If the promise is something good, we want it now! We really don’t like to wait. And yet the very best...

Ray Johnston, in The Hope Quotient , shares a remarkable insight from a leading psychologist who had spent his career helping deeply troubled married couples rebuild their relationships after yea...

Prayer is like love. Words pour at first. Then we are more silent and can communicate in monosyllables. In difficulties a gesture is enough, a word, or nothing at all—love is enough. Thus the time com...

There is no doubt that in revealing the fundamental frailty of the human condition, the disabled person becomes an expression of the tragedy of pain. In this world of ours that approves hedonism and i...

In their excellent book Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the reality of what it means to “take up our cross” in our daily lives: Sometimes we suffer u...

George MacDonald, The Scottish author who had a profound effect on C.S. Lewis among others, once wrote a letter to his father about what he believed would be a great obstacle to his faith; that once h...

In her book, Invitations from God, Adele Ahlberg Calhoun shares a great analogy of the difficulty of faithful discipleship: it’s not always easy to follow: Recently I had to follow another car to a ...

We suffer these things and they fade from memory. But daily, hourly, to give up our own possessions and especially to subordinate our own impulses and wishes to others—these are hard, hard things; and...

As a stranger walked down a quiet residential street, he noticed a man struggling with a washing machine at the doorway of his house. The homeowner was clearly having a hard time, so the passerby, wan...

You have noticed, I expect, that Christ Himself sometimes describes the Christian way as very hard, sometimes as very easy. He says, “Take up your Cross”—in other words, it is like going to be beaten ...

Someone once quipped that we spend the first half of our lives struggling with the sixth commandment ( Thou shalt not commit adultery ) and the second half of our lives struggling with the fifth comma...

Once, when the famous missionary, Dr. David Livingstone, was in Africa, he wrote home to England requesting more workers. In reply, he received this message: We would like to send more workers to y...

Ambiguity may keep people up nights, but anyone seeking exquisite simplicity in his or her career ought to look for a non-leadership position. Leaders, by definition, have followers. Followers need di...

Get to know someone really well, and almost without fail, you will discover a person who routinely struggles to get out of bed in the morning. And not just because they’re tired. They can’t get out of...

A. Parnell Bailey visited an orange grove where an irrigation pump had broken down. The season was unusually dry and some of the trees were beginning to die for lack of water. The man giving the tour ...

We have conducted the previous exercise in dozens of middle-to-upper-class, predominantly Caucasian, North American churches. In the vast majority of cases, these audiences describe poverty differentl...

Living in a society governed by technique conditions us to believe that in every way life is easier than it ever has been. Technique is the use of rational methods to maximize efficiency, and we...

There are two sides to forgiveness: giving and receiving. Although at first sight giving seems to be harder, it often appears that we are not able to offer forgiveness to others because we have not be...

It is quite common for Christians to experience doubts from time to time. Unfortunately, doubts about our Christian beliefs are often treated in the same way we would treat a common cold. We wait it o...

Thomas Merton’s words about the Bible in general apply to the Old Testament in particular:  There is, in a word, nothing comfortable about the Bible — until we manage to get so used to it that we ...

Once when my daughter was six and my son was two, my mother-in-law noticed my daughter holding a favorite toy just out of my son’s standing reach, and she gently scolded her for teasing him that way. ...

It isn’t easy to wait. It demands persistence when common sense says “give up.” It says “believe” when there is no present evidence to back it up. Faith is forged in delay. Character is forged in dela...

Most of life is lived in the gaps between great moments. The peaks seem to protrude only after miles and miles of death valleys. While the Bible reveals its characters in terms of their high points, w...

The root of our English term doubt has to do with duplicity. It is being divided or doubled up in our thinking. But this isn’t a matter of simply being confused or unable to make up our mind or ...

For many of us, life can easily become disorienting and discouraging. Existential questions often emerge that never have before. As stressful as modern life can be, it is somewhat comforting to know t...

While I am not one to see a demon behind every bush or spiritual warfare in every difficulty, the fact is that we are regularly engaged in the struggle against good and evil—whether we know it or not....

I actually want to believe that when it comes to communication, my biggest problem is outside of me, not inside of me. I want to think that it’s my kids, my wife, my neighbors, my boss. I want to thin...

In life, whenever someone achieves success, criticism usually follows—regardless of their skill or the effort they’ve invested. An old story illustrates this truth. A woman crafted artificial fruit so...

One day a father decided to take his son to play at the local park. The boy quickly gravitated to the sandbox and found himself mesmerized by the colors and textures surrounding him. After a short tim...