Thank you so much. It has been a great privilege and a pleasure for my husband and me to be here today and thank you for coming

out tonight.

As those of you who were here this morning know, my subject is a very strange one it may sound very strange it's

on the subject of suffering a subject which is studiously avoided by practically all,

I would say without exception, all religions in the world except Christianity.

It's denied, it's redefined, it's evaded by all other religions, but Christianity is the one faith that deals head-on with the very painful and difficult subject of suffering.

But I've called my title both this morning and this evening

the gift of suffering, which may sound preposterous.

But as I've studied the scriptures and as I've sought to fathom what a human being can fathom of the mystery of suffering,

it's been very clear to me that it is a gift from God and it is to be received as a gift.

This morning I read a couple of letters that I had gotten from radio listeners.

Never a week goes by that I don't receive many very apt illustrations to whatever I'm going to talk

about that week. And here's another one of those

letters from a reader from a listener. She wrote your words sting deep and sometimes strike chords that mortally wound.

I can't remember the exact program because only one thought registered and burned like fire, which is what it was, God's fire.

It was that love is a daily choice and God placed you in that marriage with that man for a purpose and you are to love him.

Well, when I heard this, which was about 14 months ago, I was ready to leave my husband of 22 years. Now I'm going to pause in the middle of this letter, I'm going to read the rest in a moment, but I want to give him my definition of suffering. It's not original. In fact, I would hesitate to tell you where its source came

from, but it was from several thousand years ago. It's not in the Bible, but a very wise man of many, many years ago, put it this way, very simply.

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

And if you can think of any form of suffering that does not fit under one or the other of those two categories,

I'd be very glad for you to tell me about it.

Incidentally, before I go any further, I don't know if there's still some ushers around, but I see empty seats in this room and it bothers me to know that there are people who can't come in because all the seats are supposed to have been taken.

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