Prodigal:  I think I can catch that trolley.

Me:  You’ve got as much chance as a grasshopper in a chicken coop.

Prodigal:  Maybe I should wait for the next one and we can hear a story.

Me:  Sounds like a plan.

 

This is from the book

With Christ in the Garden by Lynn James Radcliffe

 

I remember in my youth that I had this fear of pain.  I did not know whether I could take it, if it ever came to me.  Then at twenty-six of age it came.  I had to undergo an operation to be performed by the great surgeon Dr. Frank Lahey, of Boston.  I had pneumonia at the time, but to save my life they had to operate on my chest.  Because of my condition they could not give me a general anesthetic, and the local anesthetics of those days were far below their present development.  I had to go through this operation completely awake and with the endurance of severe physical pain.  I prayed as I approached it, and, in the place of pain, God was strangely near.  He gave strength sufficient even for this extreme ordeal.  I found myself saying to the surgeon through clenched teeth, “Go on, go on.”  My memory of that hour is not merely of pain, but of the wonderful discovery that when it came, with it came the resources from God to bear it.  “Not that the pain is of its sharpness shorn, but that we find it can be borne.”  There was a lifelong deliverance from the fear of pain, not that I would desire it, but that the fear of it was profoundly altered and conquered.  

 

Do not be afraid.  Even in your pain the Lord will be with you.  That is a blessing because others will not have the Lord.

 

Proverbs 8:6

Hear; for I will speak of excellent things; and the openings of my lips shall be right things.

 

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org