My topic today is one which is studiously avoided by all the major religions of the world except Christianity.

It's a subject that the other religions hardly touch it all if they do it's in a way that doesn't really deal with the subject.

The subject is suffering.

And I've entitled my talks. The subject is suffering.

And I've entitled my talks to this morning and this evening on the gift of suffering,

which probably seems to you a preposterous title, contradiction in terms.

How could we ever regard suffering as a gift.

Well, I hope that I can make that as clear as I possibly can today,

and if you may go out with a new understanding.

Let me define suffering in the simplest way that I know

and the way which comprises every kind of suffering that I can think of, and if you can think of one that doesn't fit under this heading, please let me know.

Suffering means having what you don't want or wanting what you don't have.

Now if you've got cancer, you've got something you don't want.

If your husband just died, you want something you don't have.

And there are many gradations, of course, of suffering.

But this would include the tiny trivial things

that we would be embarrassed to let anybody else know we were upset about.

If your husband has invited the boss for dinner and you want everything to be absolutely perfect

and the roast burns or the oven goes off, that is wanting something you don't have.

You want a perfect dinner and you want to show off. And so everything that upsets us or in any way would encourage us to respond with an oh no that's suffering but then it goes from the trivial to the

very great things and I had a letter from a little girl that suffered in a little girl way.

And let's never make light of the sufferings of children.

...