Thank you so very much.

After I wrote Passion and Purity, then I have written another book along the same lines called Quest for Love.

Both of these are back there at the book table.

And two others that deal with the subject about which I have been asked to speak this afternoon.

One is called a path through suffering and the other one, the path of loneliness.

What a privilege of loneliness. What a privilege it is for my husband and me to be here today.

It's an unusual privilege and one which I thank God for and embrace.

I was asked specifically to talk on the subject of hope in the midst of suffering.

Hope in the midst of suffering.

And I would give you a very simple definition of suffering.

It means having what you don't want or wanting what you don't

have. And I think every one of us can think of something under both of those headings. If you

have a headache, you've got something you don't want. If your husband has just died, you want something you don't have, and there's

a tremendous variety of things that might be fitted under one or the other of those headings.

But in the cross of Christ, we learned from the scripture that human suffering has been redeemed.

Christ took upon himself the total evil of sin.

Desperate tides of a whole world's anguish were forced through the channels of a single heart.

That was the price of our redemption.

He suffered for us and in us, and he suffers with us.

To me, that's staggering that Jesus Christ, Lord of the universe, is prepared to suffer

with us in our tiny little sufferings by comparison with his. In the things which cut across

our preferences,

...