"Preacher, why is there so much Suffering?"
Answer: There are many reasons. One is that it is almost an axiom that great things are born out of Suffering. This truth applies to Sinners as well as to saints, and caused the Psalmist to confess, "Yea, Lord, it is good for me that I have been afflicted." (Ps. 119:71) Milton produced his greatest works when he was poor, old, blind, ill, slandered, and generally persecuted; and he wrote, "Who best can suffer, best can do." "She sings well," said a great musician of a passionless cantatrice, "but she lacks something, and in that something, everything. If I were single, I would court her; I would marry her; I would maltreat her; I would break her heart; and in six months, she would be the greatest singer in Europe!"
Beethoven composed his greatest works amidst gloom and sorrow, and when he was oppressed by near total deafness; and Mozart, when subject to the tyranny of debt and amidst his struggling with a fatal disease, composed his great works such as his "Requiem." The same was true with Handel who excelled most when warned by palsy of the approach of death, and amidst the struggles of distress and suffering he composed that music that has memorialized his name in that field.
Dante wrote his greatest work in penury and exile, and when Alexander Dumas asked Reboul what made him a poet, he answered, "Suffering." He suffered the death of his wife, then the death of his child and he went into solitude to grieve, but he emerged a poet and wrote among other works, "The Angel and the Child."
When Charles Lamb was a young man, his sister, Mary, in a fit of rage, stabbed her mother in the heart with a carving knife. With an income of lO0 pounds a year, he resolved to care for his "dear" sister who was committed to an insane asylum. He gave up all thoughts of marriage, renouncing the only attachment he ever had. When she was released from the asylum, Charles joyfully welcomed her home. She was, however, subject to recurring fits of insanity throughout her life. When she felt a fit of insanity coming on, Charles would take her under his arm, and amidst a flood of tears, he would walk her to the Hoxton Asylum. "God loves her" he would say, "may we two never love each other less." Their attachment continued unclouded for forty years. Can anyone suppose he would have written as he did had he been rich, and lived in ease?
Byron, born with a clubfoot, was constantly taunted for his deformity by his capricious and violent mother. In their frequent altercations, she would take the stove poker or tongs and hurl them at him as he fled. She is said to have died in a fit of anger over her upholsterer’s bill. Had he not become embittered and morbid by his deformity he might never have written a line. The same might be said of Sir Walter Scott who sprained his feet when a boy running around the room. His great desire was to join the army, but being rejected, he took his pen and wrote Ivanhoe, Old Mortality and the Waverly Novels. So Alexander Pope, whom Samuel Johnson described as "protuberant behind and before," wrote satire --the fruit of his deformity; and Shakespeare wrote of despair and hopelessness lamenting his lameness and apologizing for his profession as an actor. He expresses distrust in himself and his misplaced affection. Samuel Johnson, plagued by melancholy, exhibited it in his writings.
John Donne said of his afflictions, "The advantage you and my other friends have by my frequent fevers is that I am so much the oftener at the gates of Heaven; and by the solitude and close imprisonment they reduce me to, I am so much the oftener at my prayers, in which you and my other dear friends are not forgotten."
Luis de Camoens wrote his great poems in exile. Poor and friendless, his faithful Indian servant, Antonio, begged for him or he would have died. Once a knight called upon him to furnish a poetical version of the seven Penitential Psalms. He raised his head from his pallet and pointing to his loyal servant, he said, "I am a forlorn, deserted wretch! See! There stands my poor Antonio vainly supplicating four pence to purchase a little coal. I have not them to give him!" It is related of the Cavalier, that he "closed his heart and his purse, and quit the room" Many treat the poor and miserable like the Hindus who consider those afflicted with leprosy to be cursed by God, and thereby attempt to justify themselves for having nothing to do with them. Neither are they justified who refrain from giving because they have often given to the same persons. And neither are they justified who refrain from giving who reason they may be a cheat and to help them would be to encourage them in their evil way.
Camoens died in a public almshouse worn out by disease and hardship. The epitaph over his grave read, "Here lies Luis de Camoens: he excelled all the poets of his time: he lived poor and miserable; and he died so, 1579." He was the National Poet of Portugal!
It was amidst the afflictions of imprisonment that John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim’s Progress, Grace Abounding To The Chief Of Sinners, and The Holy War; and from the Tower of London where he had been imprisoned by Charles II, William Penn wrote, "No Cross, No Crown." It was from prison that Hugo Grotius wrote his Commentary on St. Matthew; and Buchanan, imprisoned in a Portuguese monastery, composed his Paraphrases on the Psalms. During his confinement by Charles II in the King’s Bench Prison, Richard Baxter wrote much of his Life And Times.
Daniel Defoe spent much of his time in prison writing Robinson Crusoe and "Hymn to the Pillory." During his 13 years imprisonment in the Tower, Sir Walter Raleigh wrote his History of the World; and from prison Boethius wrote his Consolations of Philosophy. When Matthew Prior was imprisoned for two years in the reign of Queen Anne, he wrote Alma, Or Progress Of The Soul.
When Michael Faraday had to decide between a fortune of 150,000 pounds and his unendowed science, he chose the latter, and died a poor man. Jules Michelet, the French historian, of his mother, "She suffered with me in my poverty, and was not allowed to share my better fortune. When young, I made her sad, and now I cannot console her. I know not even where her bones are: I was too poor then to buy earth to bury her!" Horace tells us poverty drove him to poetry and it was poverty that drove Samuel Wesley to take up the pen.
When the Archbishop of Toledo visited the French ambassador in Madrid, great admiration was expressed of Cervantes’ work Don Quixote, and the desire was voiced of meeting the great writer. When the Archbishop revealed Cervantes was old, and poor, the French ambassador was aghast that he was not provided for out of the public treasury. At this the Archbishop declared, "Heaven forbid that his necessities should be ever relieved ...since it is his poverty that makes him write!"
Samuel Johnson wrote Rasselas to pay his mother’s debts and to defray her funeral expenses. Sir Walter Scott wrote prolifically in the midst of pain and sorrow that the proceeds might go to his creditors. And what shall we say of Franz Schubert who died at age 32 leaving only his manuscripts of music, the clothes he wore and 63 florins of money; or Calvin who left behind only 100 pounds; or John Wesley who left but two silver spoons--one in London and one in York, explaining, there were too many poor people about. After his debts were paid, only 10 pounds remained. Luther was harassed by debts to the place that in his will he wrote that he left behind "No ready money, no treasure of coin of any description;" and the widow and children of Zwingli were cared for by Heinrich Bullinger.
In His fathomless wisdom, God has ordained that great things should be born out of suffering. This is true even in nature. If the grain of sand did not afflict the oyster, the crustacean would not secrete a layer of calcium around the irritant, then another layer, then another thus forming a pearl. So the larva in the cocoon develops into a magnificent butterfly, but strengthens its wings by struggling to escape from its cocoon, and only then is it able to fly. So also in birth, travail precedes joy. Often we are brought low before we are exalted.
It is almost an axiom that great things are the fruit of Suffering. Even our Lord Jesus Christ Chose the way of suffering when in the Incarnation He came to dwell among men. It is not in ease, but in hardship; not in wealth and luxury, but more often in poverty amidst afflictions of the flesh that great things find their beginning.
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